




CHOICE 

DOROTHY 

JARNAGIN 







































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MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

























































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When the girls became aware of their danger the train 
was almost on them, frontispiece. See page 177. 


















MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


BY 

DOROTHY JARNAGIN 

n 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
WILLIAM F. STECHER 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1923 












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Copyright, 1923, 

By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 
Published September, 1923 



Printed in the United States of America 

OCT -3 1923 

©C1A759235 

/ 




the Memory of 
Doctor James Douglas Bruce 

WHOSE TEACHING WAS AN INSPIRATION, THIS 
LITTLE VOLUME IS DEDICATED 



































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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Mardee’s Home. 1 

II Mardee’s Friends.17 

III Mardee Grasshopper.27 

IV The S-B-Double-M’s.36 

V Mardee Ant.50 

VI Football and Chrysanthemums . . 66 

VII On Crow’s Nest Mountain .... 80 

VIII A Birthday Dinner and a Scare . . 93 

IX Hallowe’en.107 

X A Secret and a Quarrel.123 

XI Books, Basketball, and a Band . . . 134 

XII Of a Number of Things.147 

XIII The S-B-Double-M’s Tree .... 157 

XIV An Adventure.171 

XV Politics.185 

XVI More Politics.198 

XVII The Play.208 

XVIII Two Birds with One Stone . . . .217 

XIX Many a Slip.228 

XX The Martha Washington Ball . . . 239 

XXI Spring.249 

XXII Baseball.262 

XXIII The June Jubilee.274 

XXIV Mardee Grasshopper Ant.291 



















ILLUSTRATIONS 


When the girls became aware of their danger the 
train was almost on them .... Frontispiece 

PAGE 


“I see—Mardee Grasshopper and Mardee Ant” . 34 

They found the three girls armed to the teeth . . 104 

An usher came across from the door with a big 
bunch of pink roses.213 



MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


CHAPTER I 

MARDEE ’s HOME 

‘ 1 There now, Mardee — only two more button¬ 
holes and it will be done!” 

Mrs. Gray briskly snapped oft a thread as she 
spoke, and firmly thumbed a finished buttonhole 
on her white-aproned knee. 

Marjorie, sitting beside her on the old-fashioned 
sofa in the dining-room bay window, gave a little 
bounce of excitement and exclaimed for the for¬ 
tieth time: 

“Oh, Mother, it’s perfectly scrumbunctious!’’ 
She was holding spread out on her lap the ruffled 
skirt of the white organdie dress her mother was 
making, and she patted it at frequent intervals 
with rapturous little pats. “I know it will be the 
very darlingest dress at the party to-night.” 

“Pshaw! I bet Marilyn Gibson’s dress will be 
a ready-made one out of her father’s store, or 
else made by a real dressmaker,” remarked Bar¬ 
bara, Marjorie’s sister. She was stretched out 
on the floor by the door to the side porch with 
her arms around an Airedale terrier. 

“Don’t move. We’re so comfortable. What’s 
the use of talking?” put in Seldom Fed, the dog. 


2 


MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


At any rate, lie half opened his eyes and uttered 
sundry guttural sounds which expressed those 
ideas. 

‘ ‘ See here, Bab Gray, ’’ laughed her mother, bit¬ 
ing off a new thread, “I want to know if I haven’t 
made enough dresses for you two girls to have 
graduated yet into the ‘real dressmaker’ class?” 

“I think a certain person is jealous because she 
is not in the high school and not invited to the 
reception for new students,” Marjorie confided 
in a teasing aside to her mother. 

“Or maybe a certain person is inclined to be 
critical because nobody has made a new dress for 
her, or bought her new slippers and a fan,” Mrs. 
Gray replied in a laughing stage whisper. 
“Never mind, Bab, old girl,” she added in the 
younger daughter’s direction, “next year you will 
be a high-school Freshman, and then you will be 
invited to the faculty reception for new students 
and Mother will make you a new dress to 
wear . 9 9 

“And then you’ll think Mother sews as well 
as Miss Parthenia Schmedley herself,” Marjorie 
finished in triumph. 

“Mother sews all right. I just meant — well, 
you said it would be the darlingest dress at the 
party, and Marilyn is ever so much richer than 
we are, ’ ’ explained Barbara in an apologetic tone. 

“Ain’t it ’bout time to set de suppah table, 
Miss Lizzie?” a new voice interrupted the con¬ 
versation, and the door to the back hall opened 
wide enough to admit a kinky black head. ‘ ‘ Law- 
dee, Miss Mardee—” and the door was flung 


MARDEE’S HOME 3 

wide enough to reveal two upraised yellow palms 
—“ain’t dat de pur tie st thing!” 

i ‘ It’s perfectly scrumbunctious, isn’t it, 
Lighty?” agreed Mardee, her forty-first repeti¬ 
tion. “And you ought to see the slippers and the 
fan that go with it. Just you wait!” 

She arose with caution and spread the ruffly 
billows on the sofa where she had sat, and then 
disappeared in the direction of the hall and the 
stairway, whence she presently emerged out of 
breath, bearing in one hand a pair of white kid 
slippers, in the other a feather fan at full mast, 
and dangling limply from one arm a pair of white 
silk stockings. 

Lighty, who had crossed the room and raised 
one fold of the organdie between a humbly admir¬ 
ing thumb and forefinger, again threw up both 
hands and made three round o’s of her eyes and 
mouth. 

“Ain’t — dey busters?” she demanded of an 
invisible world. She was a wiry chocolate brown 
girl with tightly plaited braids all over her long 
head and a keen roving eye. “An’ won’t — dem 
boys an’ girls make a ’miration when you gits 
’em on? Um-m-m-uh!” 

‘‘ Those heels on the slippers are the very new¬ 
est thing,” Mardee explained in her role of ex¬ 
hibitor. She had set them down on the sofa at a 
proper distance from the bottom of the organdie 
and spread out the stockings along the space be¬ 
tween. “They look like lace veils, don’t they? 
The young lady who sold them to us said they 
were very stylish. ’ ’ 


4 


MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


‘ 1 Um-m-uh! ’’ commented Lighty with an unction 
satisfactory enough to make up for any vagueness 
of diction. 

“Yes, Lighty, I’d set the table now if I were 
you,” Mrs. Gray answered her earlier remark. 
“Is the chipped beef creamed?” 

“Yas-m.” 

“And were there enough of those apples for 
apple sauce?” 

“Yas-m, Miss Lizzie, jes’ ’bout ’nough.” 

“Are the biscuits all ready to go into the oven?” 

“Yas-m, Miss Lizzie, eb’rything’s ready.” 

“Well, I suppose the doctor will be here any 
minute now. Keep your fire hot for the biscuits. ” 

While the negro girl took off the pot of flowers 
and brown runner and magazines which had trans¬ 
formed the dining table into a library table, and 
spread the cloth for supper, Mrs. Gray divided 
her attention between the buttonholes and the 
process of setting the table. 

“Now the salt cellars,” she reminded Lighty. 
“There is no glass at Doctor Gray’s place. Don’t 
forget the napkins. Done, Mardee!” she pro¬ 
nounced at last, thumbing the last buttonhole into 
shape and rising to shake out the completed gar¬ 
ment with a flourish. 

Mardee was Marjorie’s baby name for herself, 
which had persisted and was almost invariably 
applied to her, as was the nickname of Bab to 
Barbara. 

Mardee took the organdie frock out of her 
mother’s hands and whirled around with it at 
arm’s length. 


MARDEE’S HOME 5 

‘‘ Just think, Bab — an evening dress!” she ex¬ 
claimed. 

“It’s not really an evening dress. You can 
wear it in the daytime just as well. But it will 
do to wear in the evening, ’ ’ corrected Bab, thump¬ 
ing the sleeping Airdale affectionately in the 
side. 

Seldom grunted without opening his eyes. 

Bab’s words came not from any desire to be¬ 
little her sister’s possessions, but from a down- 
rightness and honesty which could not admit of 
any misnomer. Mardee was a creature of poetry 
and imagination. In the excitement of any great 
moment, like the present, her fancy could take 
wings and everyday things could dress up for 
her in high-sounding titles. Not so, Bab. No 
rapture was so intense as to lift her steady little 
feet off the ground. To level-headed Barbara an 
organdie dress was an organdie dress and not an 
evening dress, even on the night of the high-school 
reception to new students. 

“Well, anyway, that lace on it is perfectly 
lovely. And it has forty-’leven ruffles. And I’m 
going to wear it in the evening.” Mardee could 
find some glamour, even in a summer afternoon 
dress. “Really, isn’t it perfectly scrumbunc- 
tious?” 

“Well — rather,” admitted Bab. She sat up 
to get a better look at it and the pup transferred 
himself to a position more removed from her in¬ 
convenient restlessness. 

‘ 1 What’s the matter with you ? Stay over there. 
I can rest better when you’re not bothering me,” 


6 


MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


he remarked. At any rate so Bab interpreted his 
sleepy whimpers, for she replied: 

“Oh, very well, if yon have to be so disagreeable 
about it. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Mother and I had such fun shopping for these 
slippers! Aren’t they cunning?” proceeded Mar- 
dee. 

“Well, I know I’m glad I don’t have to bother 
keeping them clean. I’d rather have black ones 
myself,” was prosaic Bab’s reply. 

“Oh, Bab, I just love them! They make my 
feet look so dressed up.” 

“Huh! Clothes are a lot of bother! But 
that’s a peachy fan.” 

“You may carry it sometimes. All fluffy and 
feathery and softy.” Mardee’s fingers caressed 
it lightly. 

“Mother must have spent a lot on all of this, 
didn’t she, Mardee?” 

“Oh, Bab, you know it isn’t polite to discuss 
the price of things!” To airy, fairy Miss Mar¬ 
dee, alas, the price of any purchase was all too 
unimportant. But practical little Bab had become 
early imbued with the Grays’ very urgent need 
of considering the cost. 

“Well, she must have. If you were burned up 
to-night, Mardee, I expect the actual money loss 
would be nearly thirty dollars.” 

Mardee laughed,— a happy laugh, partly of 
amusement at Bab’s concern for the family pocket- 
book in case of accident to her sister, and partly 
of pure elation and anticipation. She spread the 
dress out on the sofa again as gently as if it had 


MARDEE’S HOME 


7 


been some beloved invalid and arranged the shoes 
and stockings and fan in what appeared to her 
the proper places. 

Mrs. Gray came bustling in from the kitchen. 
She was a plump and cheery body, always ready 
with a laugh and radiating an atmosphere of 
hominess. In her wake followed Lighty, bearing 
the chipped beef and hot biscuits. 

“Come on, chickens. Everything is ready 
now.” Mrs. Gray untied her apron strings as 
she delivered this invitation and threw the apron 
over Lighty’s arm. “I hope Daddy won’t be 
very late.” Doctor Gray was a practicing phy¬ 
sician and his wife was accustomed to his irregu¬ 
larity at meals. “Perhaps you had better light 
the gas before we sit down, Lighty. These 
September days seem very short. ” 

The house had been built before the days of 
electricity and had never been wired. High over 
the table was a chandelier holding two gas jets, one 
of which Lighty reached by means of a long gas- 
lighter holding a taper. 

Seldom Fed, meanwhile, had advanced several 
paces nearer the table and assumed a waiting 
position on his haunches, his nose twitching in¬ 
sinuatingly, his stub of a tail rubbing hopefully 
from side to side. 

Lighty departed to the kitchen and Mrs. Gray 
and the girls had hardly drawn their chairs up 
to the table when there was a stamping on the 
back porch, the usual sign that Doctor Gray, 
having come in through the driveway and the 
garage in the back yard, was wiping his feet be- 


8 


MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


fore entering the house. Then the kitchen door 
opened, his salutation to Lighty could be heard, 
and in a moment he appeared in the dining-room, 
— a tall, thin, gray-haired man twenty years older 
than his wife, with a white mustache and tender, 
whimsical eyes. 

1 ‘ Oh, there ’s the master! There’s the master!’’ 
the Airedale had announced in joyous wiggles at 
the first sound of his footsteps, and before the door 
opened he was waiting with an impatient paw 
clawing at the crack. 

“Oh, Pm so glad to see you! We’re all so glad 
you ’re back! ” his doggish welcome declared, in a 
frenzy of curveting and leaping the moment the 
door was opened. 

“Nice Seldom! Good old Seldom!” Doctor 
Gray greeted him, patting his wiry brown head 
with smiling affection. ‘ ‘ Seldom ’ ’ had been hon¬ 
ored at baptism — or whatever takes the place of 
that ceremony among dogs of good breeding — 
with the more dignified appellation of Prince 
Chap, but the nickname of Seldom Fed, applied 
during his voracious and emaciated puppyhood, 
had clung to him ever since. 

“Now, Seldom, down! — First kiss to Mother,” 
Doctor Gray proceeded, bending over his wife. 
“Now, Rose Red and Snow White.” The two 
girls answered in general to the description of 
those two heroines of fairy lore, Mardee all pink 
and white and golden, with a Dresden china 
daintiness, her bobbed hair making a shining halo 
about her face; Bab sturdier, plumper, less 
ethereal, her brown hair, which she had refused 


MAKDEE’S HOME 


9 


to sacrifice to the barber’s shears, braided Dutch 
fashion in two plaits. Bab had her mother’s four¬ 
square wholesomeness, Mardee her father’s poetic 
grace. Doctor Gray kissed both girls before he 
sat down in the armchair at the head of the table. 

“Will you have to go out again to-night!” asked 
Mrs. Gray. 

“Not unless I get a call over the telephone. You 
and I can beat Mother and Mardee at parchesi, 
Bab. How about it!” 

“Oh, Daddy, did you forget that I was going 
to a party ! ’ ’ bridled Mardee with playful dignity. 
Her manner said that men were careless, blun¬ 
dering things to let such important matters slip 
their minds. 

“I thought perhaps you could take Mardee in 
the automobile if you were going out, ’ ’ Mrs. Gray 
explained. “The party is at Miss Rhinebeck’s, 
and Don Willis has asked to go with Mardee, 
but I didn’t like to think of our little next-door 
neighbor in the light of an escort quite yet.” 
She smiled with a mixture of mischief and tender¬ 
ness in her elder daughter’s direction as she 
spoke. 

Doctor Gray had been looking at Mardee with 
a wistful intentness from the moment she had 
accused him. There was something about her 
to-night he did not seem to have noticed before: 
a more delicate pink in her cheeks, perhaps — 
like the blush of a wild rose, he thought to him¬ 
self — a starry light in her eyes, a dreaming droop 
to her lashes, a misty shimmer in the soft cloud 
of hair that shadowed her brow. 


LO HARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“Mother forgets that I am a high-school girl 
now,” she was pretending to pout. 

Suddenly Doctor Gray sighed. 

“Tired, dear?” Mrs. Gray asked. 

“No; I’ve lost one of my babies. Mardee here 
is grown up all of a sudden. Mind you don’t 
think you can shake off your old daddy, young 
miss! Indeed I will take you to Miss Rhinebeck’s 
to-night. We’ll take along that young squirt of 
a Willis, who thinks he can beau you around, if 
he wants to go with us. And I’ll beat Bab at 
crokinole when I come home. No young knights 
hanging around trying to carry you off to par¬ 
ties, are there, little one?” 

Bab’s reply was to go around behind her 
father’s chair and rumple his gray hair indig¬ 
nantly,— an irregular proceeding not altogether 
unheard of before in the somewhat informal Gray 
household. 

Lighty’s arrival in the midst of this demonstra¬ 
tion saved Doctor Gray from a punishment more 
severe. 

“Lighty, what is the fastest thing you know?” 
inquired Mardee. 

Lighty showed a row of white teeth and rolled 
her eyes in a grin. She was one of a family of 
negroes who had belonged to the Grays “befo’ 
de wah”, and she had worked for the doctor’s 
family since she was a little skinny-legged, wild¬ 
eyed pickaninny, first as assistant to “Aunt 
Panky”, as her mother was called in the house¬ 
hold, before Aunt Panky’s rheumatism had pre¬ 
vented her from acting as cook any longer. She 


MARDEE’S HOME 


11 


was used to the ways of the girls. Lighty’s real 
name was Luvertis. Aunt Panky had called her 
Lighty in her childhood because she was so quick 
and light on her feet, and had selected her as an 
assistant from her plentiful brood because of that 
quality. 

‘ 4 Fire injun, I reckon, Miss Mardee. How come 
you ask?” 

“Because I want you to get this table cleared 
off faster than a fire engine, then. I want to get 
through and dress,” Mardee replied. It was the 
task of the two girls to help Lighty with the work 
in the evenings so she could get off as early as 
possible. 

“Lawdee, Miss Mardee,” was all Lighty would 
commit herself to, but the three threw themselves 
into their labors with such energy that it seemed 
as if magic must have cleared the table and 
adorned it with the brown runner and pot of 
flowers and the reading lamp beside which Doc¬ 
tor Gray read and Mrs. Gray sewed and the girls 
studied their lessons in the evenings. It must 
have been magic, too, that kept the dishes from 
being smashed to bits by the mad haste with which 
they were stacked up and washed. 

“Where do I come in?” asked Seldom’s anxious 
brown eyes, roving nervously from one flying 
plate-bearer to another. 

“Here, Seldom! Here, Seldom!” Bab in¬ 
vited him briskly, when the scraping was all done 
and the choicest morsels saved for him. The 
two whisked out of the back door simultaneously 
and his supper was hastily deposited on the tin 


12 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


plate under the tree which constituted his dining¬ 
room canopy. 

In half the usual time Lighty with her “pan” — 
that institution by means of which the negroes 
are fed out of the white folks’ back doors — had 
departed. 

“Now, Mother dear, I can’t seem to feel any 
interest in the affairs of the vicar’s family to¬ 
night. My own are so much more absorbing. 
Mayn’t we read two chapters to-morrow night in¬ 
stead?” Mardee begged, when she had returned 
to the dining-room. This was a reference to ‘ ‘ The 
Vicar of Wakefield”, which Mrs. Gray was read¬ 
ing aloud. She read a chapter a night, before the 
girls began their lessons. 

“Run along! Both of you! Shoo!” Mrs. 
Gray waved both hands at them, laughing, and 
Mardee, gathering up in her arms the precious 
finery on the dining-room sofa, sped joyously up 
the stairs to her room, followed hotfoot by 
Bab. 

The Grays’ home was an old-fashioned one with 
a narrow front hall at one side of the house, a steep 
flight of stairs ending in a still narrower upper 
hall beside the door into the front bedroom shared 
by the two girls. This was a simple room 
with matting on the floor, muslin sash cur¬ 
tains at the windows, and a plain cherry set 
of furniture. 

“You light the gas, please, Bab, and then lend 
a hand here, won’t you?” said Mardee. 

“Yes, your ladyship,” replied Bab in a respect¬ 
fully menial tone. 


MARDEE’S HOME 


13 


She lighted the gas in the two bracket jets on 
either side of the bureau mirror, and Mardee de¬ 
posited her burden on the bed. 

The color was mounting in her cheeks and her 
eyes were shining with pleasure. Mardee’s chief 
beauty had always been the delicate color which 
came and went in her clear fair skin. When she 
was happy it showed in the flush of her cheeks; 
any animation brought a blush; and under excite¬ 
ment she fairly glowed. No debutante adorning 
herself for her coming-out party ever took more 
pains with her toilet than did Mardee dressing for 
her first high school reception, and no court beauty 
in her silken boudoir ever met a sweeter image in 
her glass than did she when she dimpled and 
glowed at her reflection. Bab made a willing 
lady’s maid and Mrs. Gray came upstairs to give 
the last experienced touches. 

“Now give me my fan,” demanded Mardee, 
whirling around on her little white kid toes when 
she was sartorially complete. 

“Yes, your ladyship. Anything else, your lady¬ 
ship?” Bab replied. 

Mardee tossed back her fluffy mane and turning 
her profile, with feather fan extended for a back¬ 
ground, struck a theatrical pose. 

“How’s that for Irene Castle?” she asked, with 
lifted eyebrows and an affected shrug. 

“Don’t put on such airs when you get to the 
party,” advised Bab with little-sisterly disap¬ 
proval. 

“I don’t call that putting on airs,” retorted 
Mardee. 


14 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“What else is it? You’re not acting like your¬ 
self,” Bab insisted. 

“I’m acting like one of my selves. When I’m 
wiping dishes or studying lessons I’m one me, and 
when I’m dressed up like this for a party I’m 
another me. The dish-wiping, studious me 
doesn’t act that way naturally, but the other me 
does.” 

4 ‘ Then the other you is a silly you, ’ ’ pronounced 
Bab witheringly, as she followed her to the top of 
the stairs. 

“I’m ready, Daddy dear,” Mardee announced, 
dropping a sweeping curtsey outside the dining¬ 
room door just at the foot of the stairs. 

* ‘ Goodness me! 

I never did see 
Such a pretty girlee 
As my Mardee! ’ 9 

rhymed Doctor Gray, laying down his newspaper 
and rising to return her obeisance with a stately 
bow. 

Mardee raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips 
and twisted one shoulder in sinuous nonchalance, 
but Bab on the stairs burst out with a demand for 
her father’s confirmation of her protest. 

“Daddy, she’s an affected goose, isn’t she?” 

Mardee laid her own case before the judge. 

“It’s not affectation if it’s the way I feel, is it? 
I told Bab there were two me’s. It w T ould be 
affectation for the stay-at-home me, but it is 
natural for the butterfly, have-a-good-time me to 
act that way.” 


MARDEES HOME 


15 


Doctor Gray gathered both his argumentative 
daughters to him, one on each side, and empha¬ 
sized his judicial opinion with an affectionate 
squeeze, first with one arm and then with the other. 

“Bab, I’m afraid she’s getting pretty. I be¬ 
gan to notice it at supper. And when they do 
that, they’re very apt to lose their heads. But, 
Mardee, you’re more than pretty. You have a 
mind, too. Take care that you don’t let it go to 
waste.” 

“You’re a precious, flattering old Daddy,” Mar- 
dee smiled up at him and gave his arm an answer¬ 
ing squeeze. 

“No, not flattering. Mardee, do you remember 
the fable of the grasshopper and the ant? How 
the grasshopper danced in the sun all summer 
long, while the ant worked and stored up food for 
the winter? You have the two characters of that 
fable within yourself. The two you’s you spoke 
of were Mardee Grasshopper and Mardee Ant. 
The light-headed, pleasure-loving Mardee is Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper; the sensible little stay-at-home 
Mardee who helps about the house and loves her 
studies is Mardee Ant, But one of those Mardees 
is going to develop at the expense of the other. 
There will be a struggle between them. If Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper wastes the summer of her youth 
dancing in the sunshine of parties and pretty 
clothes she won’t have anything else when winter 
comes. And if Mardee Ant lays up a love of good 
books and an ability to enjoy quiet hours, she will 
have something to feed upon when her pink cheeks 
have faded and griefs and responsibilities have 


16 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


begun to come. I believe I agree with Bab here 
that we had better help Mardee Ant win the 
struggle.” 

“We’ll have an awfully hard time,” sighed 
Mardee honestly. 

But Doctor Gray smiled. “I don’t think so. 
All we have to do is to give her a chance. Now 
run out on the porch and wait until I get the car 
started. I telephoned Don to be ready when he 
heard the engine and we’d take him to the party. ’ ’ 

Mardee kissed her mother, patted Seldom’s 
head, and went out on the front porch. In a 
little while the chug-chug of the automobile in the 
garage brought Don Willis out of his front door 
and across the lawn between the two houses, and 
when Doctor Gray came down the driveway the 
boy and girl came out together to get into the car. 


CHAPTER II 


mardee’ s friends 

Don was a tousled-headed, freckled-faced boy, 
not unlike Seldom Fed in his general character¬ 
istics, who had grown up with the two Gray girls 
under conditions which made him seem more like 
a brother, or at any rate a very near cousin, than 
just a friend. The two families had been next- 
door neighbors since the children were babies 
and had maintained the friendliest relations. Don 
and Mardee had started to school on the same day, 
and having gone through every grade of the gram¬ 
mar school in the same room, had arrived now at 
the dignity of high school students together. 

“It will be a mighty big party/ , said Mardee. 
* ‘ There are so many students in the high school. , ’ 

“I guess it’s a big party every year,” replied 
Don. “That’s why they have it at Miss Rhine¬ 
beck’s house. She is the only one in the faculty 
whose home is large enough to entertain the whole 
crowd in. * 9 

“I can remember when the old Rhinebeck place 
was away out in the country,” Doctor Gray re¬ 
marked. “It has always been one of the finest 
old places in Channingsburg. Susie Rhinebeck 
was just a little girl in those days, and Allie Her¬ 
rington was one of her playmates . 9 9 


18 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


‘ 4 Miss Herrington?” exclaimed Don. 

‘‘That cross old thing?” echoed Mardee. “I 
can’t think of her ever having been yonng or play¬ 
ing with anybody, can yon, Don? She scares me 
to death.” 

“Pm afraid she’ll scare all the math out of our 
heads instead of hammering it in, ’ ’ Don agreed. 

“But Miss Rhinebeck’s a love. I’m sure I’d 
like her classes even if English weren’t my favor¬ 
ite study. ’ ’ 

“She’s a rip-snorter,” agreed Don solemnly. 

The lady thus highly spoken of welcomed the 
two at the door with a smile which expressed 
something more than hospitable courtesy when it 
rested on Mardee’s eager little face, so alight with 
shy expectancy, and she stepped out on the porch 
to have a word with Doctor Gray, who had waited 
at the curbstone to watch until his little girl should 
have disappeared through the brightly lighted 
doorway. 

“Won’t you come in, Ned?” she asked. 

“Not to-night, thanks. You’ll look after my 
baby for me, won’t you, Susie?” 

“Ned,” laughed Miss Rhinebeck, “one look at 
your baby convinced me that she won’t need any 
looking after. ’ ’ 

Mardee, meanwhile, had found Sally Cox and 
Beatrice Gorham upstairs in the dressing room, 
where she had gone to remove her light cape. 

“The saints above be my witness if iver I laid 
eyes upon as swate a sight as yez be this night, 
darlin’, darlin’!” exclaimed “Begorry”, — a nick¬ 
name for Beatrice Gorham evolved through the 


MARDEE’S FRIENDS 


19 


intermediate stage of Bea Gorham and made 
doubly appropriate by her long upper lip and 
temperamental, affectionate nature. Begorry, 
having accepted the role thrust upon her by rea¬ 
son of her nickname and appearance, was given 
to couching her remarks in a picturesque brogue. 
“It’s the prettiest gur-r-rl at the party yez are, 
whativer, ’’ she wound up. 

“That’s apdyho,” was Sally’s cryptic greet¬ 
ing. 

“That’s a what? Sally, I’m much too flustered 
by Begorry’s remarks to he able to piece together 
your meaning. What’s a p d y h o ? ” 

i 6 That’s a p d you have on, ’ ’ Sally half trans¬ 
lated. 

“Well, I have on a dress, so it must be a p dress, 
then. Did you mean a pretty dress? Because if 
you did, thank you. Though p might stand for 
pink, which it isn’t, or purple, or prudish, or pig¬ 
gish— ” 

“You guessed it right the first time. It’s a 
beauty, Mard, and you look grand in it. It’s a 
p d and y 1 g in it.” 

“You look grand in it,” sang out Begorry 
promptly. 

“Why, just listen to Begorry! Who’d ’a’ 
thought it?” teased Sally. 

Both Mardee and Begorry were familiar with 
Sally’s conversational vagaries. She was the wag 
of her class — the clown, she called it herself — 
the originator of all their schoolgirl slang and the 
one who was most frequently quoted for her 
original sayings. No one could tell from day to 


20 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


day whether she would discourse in Dog Latin, 
the deaf and dumb language, or the initials of the 
words in her sentences. And as she was a clever 
mimic and a great bookworm besides, her friends 
were often obliged to translate her remarks from 
Biblical or Shakespearian English into the idiom 
of the day. Begorry was the special butt of all 
her jokes. The two were devoted chums and a 
perfect foil to each other,— Sally, brown-skinned, 
snappy-eyed, with a figure her friends did not 
hesitate to call “skinny” and a face which would 
have been homely had it not been for its alertness; 
Begorry, on the other hand, dumpy and fat 
and slow-witted, with a turned-up nose and a good- 
natured docility of expression. 

“Oh, I’m frightened at the thought of going 
down there into the midst of all those people. I 
wish we could stay up here in the dressing room,” 
said Begorry, shrinking back as the other two 
made a move to go. 

“Then what would be the use of Mardee’s p d? 
That would be hiding it under a bushel!” Sally 
reproved her jokingly. 

“Honestly, I’m not joking. You two may not 
be frightened, but just feel my hands;” and Be¬ 
gorry held out two cold and clammy extremities. 

“You won’t mind it so much when you get 
downstairs,” Mardee comforted her. “Miss 
Rhinebeck will see that we Freshmen are intro¬ 
duced to all the upper classmen.” 

“Yes, cheer up, mavourneen, the worst is yet 
to come,” laughed Sally impishly. “She’ll turn 
you over to a committee from the Middle and 


MARDEE’S FRIENDS 


21 


Senior classes to stand you up and fire the names 
of everybody at you.” 

The Channingsburg High School was divided 
into three classes, Freshman, Middle and Senior, 
and this first party of the year was for the pur¬ 
pose of making the incoming class acquainted 
among themselves and with those who had been 
there before. It was no wonder that Mardee and 
Sally and Begorry, who had been to the same 
grammar school and had been friends all the way 
through, should feel shyly inclined to cling to one 
another among so many strangers gathered to¬ 
gether from every quarter of the city, but Begorry 
was the only one who really dreaded going down¬ 
stairs again into the crowded hall. Sally had a 
venturesome spirit that welcomed any novelty, 
and Mardee’s attention was distracted by seeing 
Don Willis and Branch St. John waiting for her 
at the foot of the stairs. 

Branch St. John was Don Willis’s chum, a boy 
who, perhaps by reason of the absence of freckles 
and the smoothness of his hair, seemed much older 
than Don, and whom Mardee had always found in¬ 
teresting. He was a slender, quiet, studious lad 
with fine, frank blue eyes and a noble brow. He 
and his mother, the widow of a naval officer, lived 
with his mother’s father, a Doctor Branch, who 
had been for half a century the well-beloved pas¬ 
tor of the First Presbyterian Church in Chan¬ 
ningsburg; hut before his father’s death Branch 
had traveled all over the world and Mardee fancied 
that it was his unusual amount of experience of 
places and people that had made him seem differ- 


22 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


ent from the other boys. She had seen a good deal 
of him at Don’s and had taken an intelligent inter¬ 
est in his stamp collections and favorite books, 
which had won his grave respect. 

“Mardee, Branch has been looking for you,” 
said Don, when she reached the foot of the stairs. 

“I want you to be nice to a fellow for me to¬ 
night, Mardee,” amended Branch. 

“Why, of course I’ll be nice to any friend of 
yours, Branch. Who is it?” Mardee asked. 

“You’d be nice to anybody,” smiled Branch. 
“But this is sort of special. It’s a fellow named 
Roscoe Lawhead. Grandfather knows his family. 
They live out on Crow’s Nest Mountain and are 
such poor people that Roscoe has had to work to 
help support his brothers and sisters ever since his 
father died five or six years ago, and he is a lot 
older than most of the rest of the high school 
students. He didn’t want to come to this party 
to-night — said he entered the school to work, not 
to play — I think he has an idea he is different 
from the rest of us and you girls won’t care about 
talking to him. I persuaded him to come and I 
want you to help me make him have a good time 
— make him feel at home, you know, and all of 
that. I told him I was going to introduce him to 
a girl that would be glad to talk to him about 
books, and that I knew he’d like. I felt sure I 
could count on you, Mardee. ’ ’ 

“Of course you can, Branch.” 

“He hasn’t come yet. I’ll bring him to you 
when he does. ’ ’ 

The latter part of their conversation had been 


MARDEE’S FRIENDS 


23 


hurried by the approach of Miss Rhinebeck with 
the very evident intention of carrying Mardee oft. 

44 Mardee, this is Lutie Kent, one of the Senior 
girls, who will see that you get acquainted,” she 
said in her gracious way, and turned Mardee over 
to the Senior whose task it was to provide for her 
entertainment. 

Lutie Kent’s job was not a difficult one. In fact, 
the hardest part of it was getting a chance to in¬ 
troduce to her little charge all the Middle and 
Senior class students who flocked about her, asking 
to be presented to the glowing little Freshman 
with the animated manner. 

4 4 Miss Kent, who is the little girl holding court 
in this corner ?” Professor McKie asked Lutie in 
a whisper. Professor McKie was the new Science 
teacher, a recent college graduate. 

44 Mardee Gray,” whispered Lutie. 

4 4 You’re managing a star, aren’t jou?” he 
laughed with another glance at Mardee. w 

Mardee had not forgotten her father’s parting 
words, 44 No matter what the others do, don’t for¬ 
get that it will never go out of style for the children 
of well-bred families to be courteous and attentive 
to older people,” and she watched her chance to 
slip away from her court and speak to the chaper¬ 
ones. 

The high school teachers and some of their 
friends were collected at one end of the long 
double parlors, and Mardee shook hands with 
each one and stood chatting for a moment or two, 
with a mixture of bashfulness and cordiality that 
brought a welcoming smile into every pair of 


24 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


eyes, from 44 Daddy’’ Wingfield’s, the venerable 
principal’s, to the blue orbs of Miss Hazelhurst, 
the young physical culture director. 

Even stern Miss Herrington, the gaunt mathe¬ 
matics teacher and terror of the high school, held 
Mardee’s hand between both of hers and said 
smilingly: 

“Not all the boys and girls have been so nice 
to their elders as you. You may tell your mother 
and father that they can feel proud of their little 
daughter. ’ ’ 

To her neighbor, when Mardee had passed on, 
she whispered: 

“Ned Gray’s little girl makes you think of a 
friendly, purring kitten.” 

Channingsburg, though now a city of a hundred 
thousand inhabitants, had done its growing very 
rapidly, and most of the older natives, who could 
remember the time when it was still a small town 
with all of the easy-going friendliness characteris¬ 
tic of the South, still called each other by their first 
names. “Ned” Gray, who had done many deeds 
of quiet charity, and the wife he had brought to 
the growing town in her radiant girlhood were 
well-beloved citizens. The esteem in which her 
parents were held went far to prejudice people in 
Mardee’s favor. But that it was not only regard 
for her father and mother that made the teachers 
beam upon her, and not at all their reputation 
which attracted the glances of the younger gen¬ 
eration, Mardee had a warm consciousness in her 
heart. The very apparent admiration in those 
glances went to her head like wine and still further 


MARDEE’S FRIENDS 25 

heightened the color in her cheeks and the sparkle 
in her eyes. 

“Mardee, what’s got into you to-night ?” asked 
Marilyn Gibson, when in a crowd the two hap¬ 
pened to be side by side. “I never saw you look 
so perfectly adorable.’’ 

“Methinketh Mistress Gibs is like to throw her¬ 
self into the river from jealousy,” commented 
Sally Cox, who had overheard. Marilyn was an¬ 
other of the little group of Mardee’s intimates who 
had entered the high school together, and Sally’s 
remark was inspired by the fact that Marilyn her¬ 
self was unusually attractive in a dress which ful¬ 
filled all of Bab’s prophecies with regard to it. 

“I’d have a long w^alk to the river, Coxie dear. 
But I’ll stick my head in the punch bowl if you 
say so,” Marilyn retorted. 

Mardee had been conscious for some time of 
the presence of a rosy-cheeked, light-haired, jolly¬ 
looking boy on the outskirts of the group sur¬ 
rounding her. 

“Look here, Lutie Kent,” he said, making his 
way to her side, “you are not doing your duty. 
I am told that Miss Rhinebeck entrusted this 
young lady to your care. You’re supposed to be 
making her have a good time and you’ve failed to 
present Me to her. I consider that gross negli¬ 
gence.” 

“Don’t you think I have done all I could for her 
entertainment if I haven’t let her meet you, Tom? ’’ 
Lutie laughed. 

“I know you haven’t.” 

“Then I’ll hasten to rectify my error. Miss 


26 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Gray, this is Tom Adair, one of the brightest orna¬ 
ments of the Senior class.’’ 

“At last!” sighed the pleasant-faced boy with 
dramatic satisfaction. “I’ve been trying to meet 
you since the moment I first caught sight of you. 
I’ve asked everybody in three rooms to introduce 
me, but one would have thought they were all set 
for pickets to guard you from the intrusion of 
strangers. ’ ’ 

Mardee grabbed at her head with hands out¬ 
stretched and pressed against it from both sides. 

“I’m afraid it must be going to swell,” she ex¬ 
plained. “I’m not used to such overwhelming 
speeches.” 


CHAPTER III 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER 

Until she was introduced to Tom Adair, Mardee 
had been on the lookout for Branch St. John and 
his protege. She had not seen them but she had 
remembered Branch’s request and kept herself in 
readiness to help him set that older and poorer 
boy at his ease. From the moment she met Tom 
Adair, however, all thoughts of Roscoe Lawhead 
were crowded out of her mind. 

Wherever Tom was, the fun became fast and 
furious, and once Tom had attached himself to her 
train he became a permanent fixture. 

“How about a game of charades?” he suggested 
in an invitation that included every one in the 
room. 

“All right, Tom. You and Cliff Nash be the 
captains,” another of the older boys answered, 
and Tom wasted no time in starting to choose his 
side. 

“I’ll choose Mardee Gray,” he began. 

The other captain chose and Tom chose again. 
Soon the ranks of both sides were filled. Across 
the hall Miss Rhinebeck started some other amuse¬ 
ment and the double parlors were turned over to 
the actors of charades. 

Tom’s side had the first turn. 


28 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

1 i Let’s act i painstaking’,” suggested Lutie 
Kent. “Mardee Gray can go to the dentist to 
have a tooth pulled — 9 9 

“I’ll he the dentist ,’ 9 volunteered Prince Stan¬ 
ley, another of the Senior boys Mardee had met 
for the first time that night. 

“Oh, no, you won’t, young man,” Tom Adair 
contradicted him threateningly. “If this little 
lady’s tooth is to be pulled no one is to be trusted 
with that job but me. I’ll pull the tooth myself.” 

“We’ll see who’s the better dentist,” replied 
Prince, pretending to roll up his sleeves, and Tom 
made a belligerent show of taking off his coat, but 
peacemakers stepped in between them and Prince 
gracefully withdrew in Tom’s favor. 

Each side had several turns and Mardee was 
not a character again until Tom Adair’s side acted 
“Incomparable.” Then they presented the first 
three syllables in one scene as “In come pair.” 
A pair of Middle classmen went into the room be¬ 
yond the double doors where the other team was 
gathered. The last two syllables were acted as 
one word, “able,” by two boys, one, a big strong 
Senior, showing that he was “able” to hold a 
smaller one, a Freshman, at arm’s length. When 
the whole word was to be shown Captain Tom 
said: 

“Send Mardee Gray in.” 

Mardee held back and laughed a protest, but 
every one clapped and insisted upon her going, 
until she was forced to make her appearance in 
the other room, blushing and wearing a modest air 
of deprecation that won the hearts of her audience. 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER 29 

It was all a new experience, and thrilling and 
delightful. Sober little Mardee Ant, whom 
Branch St. John was counting on to talk about 
books to bashful Roscoe Lawhead had gone into a 
total eclipse. Her light had been extinguished by 
the brilliance of Mardee Grasshopper, and Mardee 
Grasshopper had completely forgotten the conver¬ 
sation with Branch at the foot of the stairs. 

Branch had been on Clift Nash’s side during the 
charades, and therefore unable to have a word 
with Mardee, but after the game he found a chance 
to whisper in her ear: 

6 ‘ Roscoe Lawhead is in the other room now, 
herding by himself. I’m going to bring him up, 
if it will be all right. ’ ’ 

Mardee nodded brightly, and just then Tom 
Adair appeared with Cliff Nash in his wake. 

“This ugly mutt isn’t such a tough guy as he 
looks, Miss Mardee,” Tom gracefully introduced 
him. “You needn’t be afraid of him. He’s Cliff 
Nash, a running mate of mine, and I’ll vouch.for 
his harmless character.” 

“Why, really, you don’t look so very bad,” 
laughed Mardee. 

“Thank you for them woids, kind lady,” said 
her new friend, a lean dark boy with a prominent 
nose. “You’ll soon come to feel that the only 
thing against me is that I was first introduced to 
you by this cherub-faced deceiver. But, believe 
me, I have strength of character enough to resist 
contamination from' associating with him.” 

Mardee looked from one to the other in mock 
despair. She was enjoying the sparring match 


30 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


between them and had just declared derisively, 
“You two seem awfully fond of each other,” when 
Branch St. John returned, bringing with him a 
long-legged boy with a shock of home-cut hair and 
big hands dangling too far out of his coat sleeves. 

“Miss Gray, this is Mr. Lawhead,” said Branch 
with a fine courtesy which implied that Mardee 
was being honored as much as Roscoe by the in¬ 
troduction. 

Alas for the Mardee Ant whom he had confi¬ 
dently expected to find ready to assist him in his 
kindly undertaking! Alas that Mardee Grasshop¬ 
per had been called into being by the two enter¬ 
taining Seniors who were flattering her with their 
attentions! 

“I am glad to meet you,” said Mardee, giving 
the lanky mountaineer an impersonally cordial 
hand, and then turning to answer a remark which 
Cliff Nash had addressed to her on the other 
side. 

“Oh, really, are they dancing in the other 
room? Yes, I’d love to dance.” 

She had politeness enough to include Branch 
and his friend in her party. 

“Mr. Lawhead, I hope you dance, too? Won’t 
you and Branch come with us across the hall?” 

She could see the look of disappointment in 
Branch’s eyes as Roscoe, of course, declined, but 
she loved dancing and was so surprised and de¬ 
lighted to find how much better she could dance 
with these older boys than with the other begin¬ 
ners like herself in her dancing class, who had 
hitherto made up the list of her partners, that she 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER 31 

put Branch’s troubles out of her mind. She was 
so evidently enjoying herself that her high spirits 
spread like a contagion and brought her smiles and 
compliments, which in turn had the effect of mak¬ 
ing her happier and prettier than ever. 

“I know who is the belle of the ball,” whispered 
Tom Adair mysteriously. 

‘ i No, you boys are all only flattering me, ’ 9 Mardee 
accused him, laughing happily. “You have given 
me compliments on everything, and now even my 
dancing, which I know* is horrible — but I suppose 
boys will be boys.” 

Mardee had reached that delicious stage of her 
development, as her father had so suddenly dis¬ 
covered at supper, which corresponds to the bud¬ 
ding of a flower. She had passed, almost over¬ 
night, from childhood into girlhood, that little hour 
stolen for us mortals from fairyland, the uncon¬ 
scious possessor of which holds an irresistible 
charm for everybody with whom she comes in 
contact. 

Perhaps it was asking too much of one suddenly 
blessed with so much power to expect her to use it 
wisely, but there was one person who expected no 
less, and like the fine, honorable gentleman he was 
he carried his complaint, not to any outsider, but 
straight to Mardee herself. 

Branch St. John did not have an opportunity 
to speak to Mardee alone after she had treated 
Roscoe Lawhead so coolly until late in the evening 
when the refreshments were served. He asked her 
to dance, but some one else broke in on him so 
soon that he did not have time for any conversa- 


32 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


tion. He had the advantage, however, of being 
one of the first to discover it when the plates began 
coming in from the kitchen. 

“Mardee, won’t you eat your ice cream with 
me?” he asked her, appearing at her side with a 
plate in each hand just as the music stopped after 
a dance. 

“Thank you, Branch,” Mardee replied and fol¬ 
lowed him through the crowd. He went out of the 
front door and around the porch to the very dark¬ 
est corner under the vines, where he found a place 
for them at the top of the steps leading down into 
the backyard. 

“Now!” he said, drawing a long breath, “I 
don’t believe any one can find you here and carry 
you off. I have been trying to talk to you all 
evening and couldn’t get in a word for the Seniors 
around you. You certainly made a hit with 
them. ’ ’ 

Mardee had to laugh at the tone of complaint 
in which he made this unwilling tribute. 

“What’s the matter? Didn’t you like that?” 
she asked. 

“Well, I couldn’t help that, I guess — and you 
couldn’t either— ” this with a friendly smile 
which softened his next words — “but I didn’t like 
your being so much nicer to those fellows that had 
plenty of friends already than you were to that 
boy I wanted you to talk to for me.” 

“Roscoe Lawhead!” exclaimed Mardee with 
compunction. She drew in her breath and caught 
her lip between her teeth. “Honestly, Branch, I 
forgot all about him. I meant to help you make 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER 33 


him have a good time — and then — I had such a 
good time myself I just forgot I” 

“I know,” Branch nodded slowly. “But I 
didn’t think you would. You always seemed so 
— well, you didn’t seem like other girls, you know. 
You read hooks that were worth while and you 
could talk about them as if you had so much sense 
that I thought maybe you could appreciate just 
how that big, gawky mountain boy felt about com¬ 
ing to-night and would know how to put him at 
his ease. I thought if you talked to him about 
books and the things in which he was on an equal¬ 
ity with the rest of us, he would forget all about 
being older, and not so well dressed, and different 
in his manners.’ ’ 

“Oh, Branch, I am so sorry!” she cried con¬ 
tritely. “I do know how he felt. Is it too late 
for me to talk to him now?” 

“Yes, he’s gone home. And I don’t think I’ll 
ever get him to another party. It was all just 
as he thought it would be. You see, I had told 
him about you beforehand. I had told him you 
were different from the other girls and that he 
would like to meet you and that you would enjoy 
talking to him when you found out how much he 
had read and how ambitious he was. And he said 
you wouldn’t—: ” 

“Oh, Branch— ” 

“He said he didn’t belong in any social gather¬ 
ing. He said he was going to school to learn, so 
he could amount to something some time, but that 
these young boys and girls wouldn’t want to have 
to associate with an old countryman like him. I 


34 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

made him come because I thought it would do him 
good— ” 

‘ 1 And it was just fine of you to do it! I wish I 
did worth-while things like that — helping people 
who are not so well oft as I am myself. I’m afraid 
I am not at all the sort of girl you thought I was.” 

“I think you’re a pretty good sport not to get 
sore at me for calling you down like this. I’ll ad¬ 
mit I thought you gave Roscoe a pretty raw deal 
and I was disappointed and all that. I wasn’t 
going to any one else about it — I made up my 
mind to tell you what I thought the first chance 
I had and get it out of my system, so I could keep 
my mouth shut after that, but I supposed of course 
you’d go up in the air and it would be all oft be¬ 
tween us. It shows what kind of a girl you are if 
you ’ll still be friends when I criticize you. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Perhaps I’m the kind of a girl you thought I 
was some of the time, and am not the rest of the 
time. Daddy said to me to-night there were two 
Mardees, a Mardee Grasshopper and a Mardee 
Ant. Sometimes I am one and sometimes the 
other. It was Mardee Ant you liked and expected 
to help you with Roscoe Lawhead, and it was Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper who snubbed him and disap¬ 
pointed you.” 

< ‘ I see — Mardee Grasshopper and Mardee Ant. 
It’s the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, 
isn’t it?” 

i ‘It was Mardee Grasshopper who hurt Roscoe 
Lawhead’s feelings and Mardee Ant is going to 
make it up to him just as soon as she possibly can. 
You’ll help her, won’t you?” Mardee’s eyes, as 



"I see 


Mardee Grasshopper and Mardee Ant.” Page 34 







MARDEE GRASSHOPPER 35 

they looked at him out of the shadow of the vines, 
were perfectly sober and her voice was very much 
in earnest. 

“I’ll do anything Mardee Ant asks me to — or 
Mardee Grasshopper, either. I’m the sworn 
knight of both of them,” Branch replied with an 
undertone of seriousness in his gallant nonsense. 

“Better be Mardee Ant’s knight. She needs 
you more,” advised Mardee in a lighter tone. 

“Mardee Grasshopper seems to have plenty of 
others,” laughed Branch. “All right. Mardee 
Ant is my first choice anyhow, you know. ’ ’ 

“I hear Daddy honking his horn out in front. 
He said he would be back for Don and me at half- 
past ten. ’ ’ Mardee rose and ended their conversa¬ 
tion. She found Don waiting for her, and when 
she had bidden Miss Khinebeck good night and 
answered the laughing farewells called out to her 
from the hall and the porch, as she came down the 
stairs from the dressing room, she got into the 
automobile in a rather thoughtful mood, torn be¬ 
tween Mardee Grasshopper’s blissful recollections 
and the remorse of Mardee Ant. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M ’S 

Bab was sound asleep when Mardee got into 
bed beside her, but long before breakfast time in 
the morning she rolled over and shook Mardee 
out of dreamless depths to hear all about the 
party. 

Mardee came back to earth slowly, but once re¬ 
minded of the night before she popped her eyes 
wide open and launched forth on a glowing de¬ 
scription of the occasion for Bab’s benefit. 

“Oh, Bab, I had a glorious time !” she declared, 
stretching her arms up over her head with a de¬ 
licious yawn. “Everybody said the nicest things 
about my dress, and the way I looked, and my 
dancing— ” 

“Humph!” Bab cut short these self-laudatory 
reminiscences with a contemptuous sniff. “And 
I suppose you prissed around and behaved in the 
disgusting way Daddy called your Mardee Grass¬ 
hopper manner. ’ 9 

“Well, really, Mardee Grasshopper did get me 
into a peck of trouble,” Mardee ruefully confessed. 
“I’d remember the party with a good deal more 
pleasure if Mardee Grasshopper hadn’t been hor¬ 
ribly rude to a poor boy who needed her friend¬ 
ship, and failed a good friend when he needed 


37 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 

her.’ ’ She poured into Bab’s ears the tale of Ros- 
coe Lawhead and Branch St. John, and Bab, more 
sympathetic with a humble penitent than with a 
self-satisfied prig, offered what comfort she could. 

“ Never mind, Mardee, you can make up for it 
by being extra nice to him at school some time,” 
she said. 

“You may be sure I’ll never miss a chance of 
showing him I’m sorry,” Mardee declared. “I 
told Branch it was Mardee Grasshopper who 
snubbed him, but Mardee Ant would make it up to 
him.” 

“I told you I didn’t like Mardee Grasshopper,” 
Bab could not resist seizing the opportunity to 
remind her. 

Mardee gave a lengthy account of the charades 
and the dancing and all the minor events of the 
evening, and Bab listened enthralled, and encour¬ 
aged her with leading questions. It was Satur¬ 
day morning and there was no need to get up 
early, so she had time for a full recital. 

“It’s grand to have somebody right here at 
home to tell things to, Bab,” opined Mardee, 
curled up under the covers with her knees almost 
touching her chin. “Things are so much more 
interesting when you can tell them to somebody. ’ ’ 

“Yes, they are,” Bab agreed. 

“Now there’s Marilyn Gibson,” mused Mardee, 
on the same train of thought; “her sister is so 
much older that she thinks Gibs is nothing but a 
kid; and Sally Cox’s sister is only a baby; and 
Begorry hasn’t any sisters. Of course Sally and 
Begorry can tell things to each other, living right 


38 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

next door, but that isn’t like eating three meals 
together every day and sleeping together at night. 
I am the only one of the girls who has a sister 
near enough her own age to appreciate what she 
has to tell. ? ’ 

“You’re awfully lucky to have me,” admitted 
Bab complacently. 

Mardee gave one of the brown pigtails braided 
down her back a friendly pull for answer. 

“And, do you know, Bab, I feel as if I were 
going to have so much to tell you from now on?” 

The younger girl accepted this condescension 
without rancor. A year in the early teens makes 
a great difference in age and Mardee’s fourteen 
years gave her affairs a distinct advantage in the 
eyes of both. 

Bab had her own little group of intimates at 
school,— girls she had gone through kindergarten 
with, and the eight grades of grammar school. 
Bab was now in the eighth grade. The four girls 
Mardee had mentioned had been her own closest 
friends for years. Hardly a day passed that they 
did not drift together at the home of one or an¬ 
other. Their warm friendship had arisen partly 
from the fact that they lived in the same section 
of the city and so had attended the same grammar 
school and walked home together from school in 
the afternoons, and partly from the fact that they 
came from families of congenial tastes and similar 
standards. Now that they were in the high school 
among a larger number of girls than had ever 
been in their class before, they found that the 
ties of old association drew them more closely 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 


39 


together than ever, and they felt themselves as a 
sort of family circle in the midst of the high 
school community. 

“Pm crazy to see the girls and talk over last 
night with them,” yawned Mardee. “Come on, 
Bab, let’s get up and get this room cleaned up so I 
can go over to Sally’s before dinner.” 

On Saturdays the sisters were expected to give 
their room a thorough cleaning and were not al¬ 
lowed to go anywhere until that job was done. 

But as it happened Mardee did not have to go 
away from home to talk about the party, for Sally 
and Marilyn and Begorry had each been seized 
with a similar craving, and all came to Mardee’s 
to satisfy it. 

Sally called her over the telephone before she 
had finished her cleaning. 

“By my faith, Dame Mardee!” was her greet¬ 
ing to Mardee’s “Hello.” 

“Goodness, Sally — that’s a new one. What 
have you been reading now?” asked Mardee, 
familiar with Sally’s general style of conversa¬ 
tion and well aware that it was apt to be an echo 
of the work of literature freshest in her memory. 

“The ‘Boys’ King Arthur’, and it’s great, 
Mard. You ought to read it,” she stepped out of 
her character long enough to explain, but went on 
in the next breath: 

“Ye were passing well beseen yestere’en, fair 
damsel. Truly methinks that mayhap divers men 
hold opinion that ye be the fairest and most gen¬ 
tlest lady living.” 

“How long did it take you to make all that up, 


40 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Lime?” demanded Mardee. Lune, short for 
Lunatic, was an affectionate nickname by which 
Sally was very often called. “And what does it 
mean?” 

“Wit ye well, I could give ye tidings the most 
joyous, an ye list.” 

4 ‘ Well, I list. What sort of tidings ?’ 9 

“Tradelasts, fair damsel.” 

Mardee gave a little squeal of delight. Here 
was something she could understand well. 

“Oh, Sally, we simply must get together! I 
can give you just dozens of tradelasts.— I was 
coming over there this morning to talk over the 
party with you and Begorry.” 

“Alas, fair demoiselle! I must needs fare to 
the marts in quest of merchandise for my lady 
mother ere midday.” 

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you are talk¬ 
ing about, and even if I read King Arthur I prob¬ 
ably shouldn’t know any more than I do now be¬ 
cause I don’t soak up books the way you do, but 
if you mean you have to go down town for your 
mother this morning, why can’t you come over 
here and make candy this afternoon?” 

“I ween—- ” 

“Oh, shut up, Lune!” Mardee cut off the Ar¬ 
thurian flow of language with the rudeness of 
familiarity. “Will you, or will you not, in plain 
United States, come over and make candy this 
afternoon?” 

“Wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded 
wife? I wilt,” mocked Sally. 

“I’ll telephone Marilyn, and you whistle for 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 41 

Begorry as you come by, so we can all get to- 
gether.’ ’ 

“All right,’’ Sally agreed. 

And soon after dinner she appeared with her 
faithful admirer and foil, Begorry. They were 
always together, and both showed to the best ad¬ 
vantage as a pair, for Begorry cheerfully accepted 
the role of butt of Shlly’s jokes and Sally could 
introduce any nonsense with, “as I just laughed 
and told Begorry’ 1 — with the a in “laughed” 
very broad. In fact, this special phrase had be¬ 
come so familiar that any one of the four friends 
was likely to begin a certain type of sentence with 
it. 

“I bet you can’t spell elderblow tea with four 
letters,” said Sally to Marilyn Gibson, who had 
come before her. 

“Of course I canH, and neither can you,” Mari¬ 
lyn came back. 

“Oh, yes, I can. It’s easy. Can’t you, Mar- 
dee?” 

“ No, ” smiled Mardee, shaking her fluff of yellow 
hair. 

“Is it possible? Am I the only one who can do 
it?” Sally’s tone expressed horrified incredulity. 

“No, faith, and you’re not, because I can,” de¬ 
clared Begorry. 

“Oh, well, you don’t count because I showed 
you, and anyway you spell elderberry tea with the 
same four letters. Listen, Marilyn and Mardee: 
1 double-o t, elderblow tea. Now don’t go and 
do what Begorry did. I carefully taught that to 
her and she went home and asked her father at 


42 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the dinner table if he could spell elder berry tea 
with four letters!” Sally’s gesture expressed 
the hopelessness of Begorry’s case. 

“Begorry! Bid you?” demanded Mardee, 
laughing. 

“I did,” confessed Begorry, “and couldn’t im¬ 
agine why it didn’t sound right, as it had when 
Sally told it to me.” 

“What did your father say?” asked Marilyn. 

“Fayther said, ‘Ye bayn’t no janius, bay yez, 
aroon?’ or words to that effect,” answered Be¬ 
gorry. 

But Sally contradicted her. 

“No, he didn’t. He thought it was just too 
cute for anything. Everything his little girl does 
is all right, I wish I were an. only child. In our 
house there are so many children that nobody has 
time to pay any attention to any of us.” 

“Poor Sally!” sympathized Marilyn. “Mar¬ 
dee, has Lighty sufficiently recovered from the 
shock of finding her kitchen the way we left it the 
last time we made candy to risk it again?” 

Marilyn made a pretty picture: She was sit¬ 
ting on the front steps with a broad-brimmed hat 
flapping about her face and one arm thrown af¬ 
fectionately around Seldom Fed’s neck. Seldom, 
meanwhile, quivering with humble gratitude, made 
repeated efforts to lick her face and remained un¬ 
discouraged by rebuffs. She was tall and grace¬ 
ful and would have been an exceedingly pretty 
girl had it not been for her complexion, for she 
had quantities of beautiful blonde hair and good 
features, but some illness had left her with a 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 


48 


scarred and thickened skin which was a terrible 
grief to her. Her mother, who had both taste and 
means, was clever at selecting clothes to accentu¬ 
ate her daughter’s attractive features, and espe¬ 
cially hats and veils calculated to conceal her glar¬ 
ing defect, but the girl’s unhappy, discontented 
expression clearly indicated the effect her mis¬ 
fortune had had on her disposition. 

“Oh, Lighty doesn’t really mind dirt at heart. 
It ’s Mother who makes her clean up, anyway, and 
Mother’s a good sport, ’ ’ laughed Mardee. 

She opened the screen door as she spoke and the 
girls trooped through the hall into the big, light 
kitchen behind the dining-room. 

“Me, too!” begged Seldom’s bark, as the door 
swung shut before him. 

“No, Seldom; stay outside; that’s a good dog¬ 
gie. You’ll spoil the party frisking about,” Mar- 
dee apologized, and had no sooner reached the 
kitchen than he greeted her at the kitchen door 
with a pleading yap. But Mardee remained ob¬ 
durate. 

“Good morning, Merry Sunshine! Just look 
who’s here! ’ ’ was Sally’s greeting to Lighty, just 
finishing the dinner dishes at the sink in the 
corner. 

“Yes, Lawd. Here y’ all come again,’’ groaned 
Lighty, rolling her eyes expressively, “dirtyin’ up 
every pot an’ pan I got an’ wastin’ sugar an’ milk 
all over my table! ’ ’ 

“Lighty, we’ll promise to clean up this time,” 
Mardee sought to propitiate her. “You’re not 
going to be busy here this afternoon, are you?” 


44 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

“Naw, Miss Mardee, I’s goin’ to de dentis’ jes* 
as soon as I gits dese here towels wrung out; but 
if I fin’ my kitchen lookup like Gabriel done blowed 
his ho.’n when L gits back, I’ll sho ask yo x maw 
not to let y’ all come in here no mo’.” 

The girls accepted this dictum in a spirit of 
good nature and all pitched in to help her finish 
her work and get off. 

“Now, Marilyn, you grate the chocolate, and 
Sally get the milk and butter from the ice chest, 
while-1 measure out the sugar , 9 9 directed Mardee, 
when Lighty had been packed off to the ‘ ‘ dentis 9 9 9 
and the decks were cleared for action. She issued 
her commands like a general, for they had so often 
made fudge together and were so familiar with 
every step in the process that it did not in the 
least interfere with their real business of talking. 

“Now, Sally, what’s my tradelast?” Mardee 
demanded, when the necessary preliminaries were 
over. Mardee was stirring the fudge at the stove 
and the other three were perched about the 
kitchen, Begorry swinging her feet on the edge of 
the table and Marilyn and Sally on the sill of the 
open windows, to the imminent detriment of the 
screens. Sally was hugging her knees, her back 
braced against one side of the window frame and 
her toes against the other. 

“I said trade last,” she remarked, with the em¬ 
phasis on “last.” 

“Well, Branch St. John said you could win the 
Davis medal in a walk if you weren’t so ‘bloomin’ ’ 
lazy.” The Davis medal was the reward for 
Freshman supremacy in scholarship. 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 


45 


“That’s a sort of a backhanded compliment,” 
complained Sally. “A certain person said you 
danced as if you had been dancing all your life.” 

“No fair! You have to tell who,” protested 
Mardee. 

“Well, it was Don Willis.” 

“Oh, just little old Don.” 

Sally gave a shout of mirth at Mardee’s flat 
tone. “Aha! Methinks you had hopes it had 
been a y m named T A.” 

“A y m named T A — oh, I know! A young 
man named Tom Adair,” guessed Marilyn. 

“Why, certainly!” teased Sally. “Anybody 
with eyes, who had been to the party last night, 
could guess that. But maybe you stepped on his 
toes, Mardee dear. ’ ’ 

Sally’s trick of talking in initials would have 
made her conversation unintelligible to an audi¬ 
ence less well acquainted with her. 

“The c is b!” she cried suddenly, a moment 
later. 

That was easy enough. A horrible odor of 
scorching sugar informed everybody that the code 
stood for “the candy is burning.” Begorry 
jumped oft the table and ran to stick her nose into 
the fumes arising from the saucepan, Marilyn and 
Sally rolled off the window sills and made frantic 
efforts to grab the spoon from Mardee’s inefficient 
hands, and Mardee, elbowing them away with de¬ 
termination, alternately scraped at the bottom of 
the pan and examined the sticky gobs adhering to 
the point of the spoon. 

“You see, Sally, how unwise it is to bring up 


46 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the subject of ay m named T A when Mardee is 
stirring the fudge. Faith and you ought to have 
known better/’ scolded Begorry. 

“How could I tell it was going to affect her that 
way?” demanded Sally. 

“It isn’t spoiled,” announced Mardee. “It’s 
only a teeny weeny hit scorched.” She tried to 
ignore their teasing but her face was crimson as 
she sniffed critically at the spoon. 

“Ah — full many a rose is also not born to blush 
unseen,” jeered Sally wickedly. “Would that 
the y m we mentioned could see those b c, which is 
to say burning cheeks.” 

i ‘ Shut up, Coxie, or I ’ll t this s at you, ’ ’ threat¬ 
ened Mardee, her gesture making it plain that 
she meant to throw the spoon at her tormentor. 

“Which is to say, ‘paste you one on the bean.’ 
All right. G- me the b and I’ll b the p for you,” 
Sally returned pacifically and attention was di¬ 
rected from Mardee as the others sought to pick 
out this new puzzle. 

‘ ‘ Give me the butter, ’ ’ Marilyn finally suggested. 

“And I’ll butter the plates for you!” finished 
Begorry. 

‘‘Right — o!” Sally congratulated them, and ac¬ 
cepting the butter from Begorry’s hands perched 
herself on a corner of the table with the plates 
arrayed before her. 

The candy, as Mardee had said, was not so 
seriously damaged that it was necessary to begin 
over and the cooking and talking proceeded after 
the momentary excitement as if there had been no 
interruption. 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 47 

“Begorry, your hair looked darling last night. 
You ought to wear it that way all the time.” 

“Didn’t Miss Herrington limber up at the 
party?” 

“As I laughed and told Begorry, she was posi¬ 
tively human.” 

“Marilyn, your dress was so pretty.” 

“I heard somebody say there wasn’t a girl in 
the school knew how to wear her clothes better 
than you, Gibs.” 

“Oh, don’t you just adore Miss Rhinebeck?” 

“Didn’t she serve the most dee-licious refresh¬ 
ments ? ’ ’ 

“As I laughed and told Begorry, I could have 
died eating that charlotte.” 

“Didn’t Sally make a scrumptious gypsy in the 
charades ? ’ ’ 

i ‘ Sure. Gypsies and beggar maids and old hags 
seem to be my forte. I’m never cast for the 
angels and queens.” 

“And speaking of charades — here’s to Mardee 
the incomparable.” Begorry, who had proposed 
the toast, raised a bottle of vinegar to her lips, 
and was greeted with peals of mirth. 

“Right well I trow there can never be four other 
damsels so passing fair as we,” was Sally’s sum¬ 
ming up of the situation, as they had outlined it. 

“Honestly, if I do say it as shouldn’t, there’s 
not another crowd in the high school half so nice, 
is there?” Mardee chimed in. 

“I second the motion,” laughed Marilyn. 

“The Fine Four,” jibed Sally. 

“The Foxy Four,” suggested Begorry. 


48 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

“The Foolish Four, maybe/’ corrected Marilyn. 

“Oh, girls, let’s have a club and call it something 
like that! ’ ’ exclaimed Mardee. 

“I was just about to say that very thing!’’ cried 
Sally. 

In fact, the idea had spontaneously arisen in the 
minds of all at once and nobody claimed the credit 
for it. The only thing they could not agree on was 
a name. They discussed in turn “The Sky¬ 
rockets”, “The Nixie Pixies”, and “The Merry 
Maids”; Begorry suggested that “Pegaways” 
would be a good studious name, and Mardee 
thought “The Hit-or-Miss Club” would come 
nearer to creating a correct impression of their 
scholarship; Marilyn said that an even more ap¬ 
propriate name would be ‘ ‘ Fudge and Fun. ’ ’ For 
a time they seriously considered “The Foxy 
Four. ’ ’ 

It was Sally who finally settled the question. 
And, characteristically, she did it with initials. 

“There is no use choosing ‘Pegaways’ or 
‘Hit-or-Miss’ or anything that refers to studies,” 
she said, “because Daddy Wingfield doesn’t allow 
secret societies in the high school. We have to 
keep this an out-of-school affair, and it’s just be¬ 
tween ourselves. Let’s just put our initials to¬ 
gether and call ourselves the S-B-double-M’s and 
not tell what it means. That sounds sort of mys¬ 
terious and important.” 

“Good!” “Oh, yes, let’s!” “That’s fine!” 
There was a confusion of comments, and the name 
was adopted on the spot. 

“We’ll have the club all through high school and 


49 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S 

it will make us good friends all our lives,’’ said 
sentimental Begorry earnestly, but any tendency 
to “slop over” was promptly nipped in the bud 
by Sally, who agreed derisively: 

“Yes, I’ll tell my seven children about it when 
these are the dddbr.” 

“Seven children — poor Lune!” 

“Poor children, I say!” 

“What is dddbr?” 

“Dear dead days beyond recall,” explained 
Sally, who was fond of the old songs. 

“I guess you will think so if you have seven chil¬ 
dren to wash and spank! ’ ’ Marilyn assured her. 

The fudge was finished and almost eaten up, 
the pots and pans were washed and the scars of 
battle in large measure removed as per promise 
to Lighty, before this point was reached. Already 
the afternoon was drawing to a close, and with 
a hasty swallowing of the last crumbs of fudge on 
the platter the S-B-double-M’s took their leave and 
separated, not to meet again until the next day at 
least. 


CHAPTER V 


MARDEE ANT 

The S-B-double-M’s appeared at school on Mon¬ 
day wearing white badges with the name of the 
new club printed on them in ink. The strips of 
white were small and placed so inconspicuously 
that only near neighbors and those with sufficient 
curiosity to look closely could make out what the 
letters were. But there were enough of the curi¬ 
ous-minded to spread the news quickly that some 
of the girls were labeled, and many were the ques¬ 
tions asked as to the meaning of the name and the 
reason for wearing it. There was some conjecture 
as to how many had it on, but the S-B-double-M’s 
had been chums for so long that it was not hard 
for any one to guess just how many of the new 
badges there were. 

The girls were not so open in their interest as 
the boys. There had been no thought of snobbish¬ 
ness in forming the little club. There were many 
such friendships in the high school, as there are 
in every school, and since the S-B-double-M’s did 
not assume that any one else could care to be one 
of them they did not put themselves in the position 
of keeping anybody out. Still, it was natural, 
perhaps, for the girls to hold a little aloof. But 
the boys took great pains to, inspect the badges 


MARDEE ANT 


51 


closely and to ask if it were contagions, or if it 
were a new brand of breakfast food, or if that new 
trimming were the style. 

“It’s not a sign hung out for anything like 
smallpox or diphtheria, is it?” asked Ed McKie. 
Ed was a younger brother of Professor McKie. 

Don Willis showed signs of extreme nervous¬ 
ness regarding it and assumed a defensive posi¬ 
tion with a hastily selected rock as a convenient 
missile when Mardee and Marilyn and Begorry 
came down the front steps together at recess. 

“It’s all right, Don. See our white flag,” 
Mardee reassured him, holding up a handker¬ 
chief. 

‘ ‘ But how about the rest of you ? Are you sure 
the whole tribe is peacefully disposed?” he in¬ 
quired. 

“There’s only Sally besides us,” Mardee told 
him. “And Sally isn’t dangerous.” 

“Well, then,” Don heaved a sigh of relief and 
dropped his rock. ‘ ‘ Branch St. John brought his 
camera to-day to get some pictures of Miss 
Rhinebeck’s window boxes for her. Don’t you 
want him to shoot you four S-B-double-M’s to¬ 
gether?” 

“Oh, goody!” “Yes!” “Will he do it?” an 
eager chorus replied. 

“Sure. Go and get Sally, and I’ll tell Branch 
he’s wanted around here at the front.” 

Begorry, who went in search of Sally, returned 
with the report that she couldn’t come. 

“It’s studying geometry she is, and can’t come 
at all, at all, ’ ’ she gave her report to the group on 


52 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

the front steps, which, by the time she returned, 
had been augmented by Branch St. John with his 
camera. 

‘ ‘ She had better come now if you four want a pic¬ 
ture taken together,’ ’ said Branch. 4 4 1 won’t have 
my camera here any other time.” 

‘ ‘ Go on back and tell her she has to come. Mar- 
dee, you go with Begorry and help bring her,” 
commanded Don, as master of ceremonies. 

Thus reenforced, the committee returned, bring¬ 
ing Sally willy-nilly. 

“I can’t stay but a minute — honestly,”' she 
protested, taking her seat on the steps. “I’d 
rather be shot at sunrise than face Miss Herring¬ 
ton unprepared.” 

4 ‘Let’s all be laughing in the picture,” said Be¬ 
gorry. 

“All right,” the others agreed. 

Begorry, sitting on the bottom step and smiling 
manfully, turned suddenly to discover Sally with 
a worried pucker between her eyes watching 
Branch at work with the camera. 

“Why, Sally Cox!” she scolded. “You said 
you were going to laugh.” 

Sally, with her gaze fixed on Branch instead 
of on Begorry, and waiting to break into a laugh 
when he was ready to snap the picture, showed her 
teeth in a smile, and just then Branch pushed the 
shutter without noticing Begorry’s change of po¬ 
sition. 

‘ ‘ Now, who didn’t laugh, old lady ? ’ ’ Sally bellig¬ 
erently demanded of Begorry. 

“Oh, wurra, and did he take the picture just 


MARDEE ANT 53 

then?” cried Begorry, chagrined in spite of her 
joking manner. 

“He certainly did, Miss Buttinski. I was 
watching so I could smile at the proper time and 
not get my face set in a smile that would look as 
if I had died that way a month or so ago.” 

“I can take another picture,” offered Branch 
pacifically, but his attempt to pour oil on the 
troubled waters only aroused Sally’s ire the 
more. 

“I suppose you’ll have to,” she blustered, “and 
recess is nearly over and Miss Herrington just 
lashing up and down in there like a lion in a cage 
waiting to bite my head off if I don’t know my 
lesson. It’s all the fault of this bossy Begorry, 
too.” 

“Sook, Boss, sook!” laughed Don, in the per¬ 
suasive tone one uses to a cow. 

By the time the second picture was taken, the 
fifteen-minute recess was ended and Sally had 
had no chance to look over her geometry lesson. 

“Now see what you have done—all of you,” 
she complained. “If Miss Herrington asks me a 
question I’ll have to say ‘Unprepared,’ and my 
knees are shaking at the mere thought of it.” 

The other S-B-double-M’s sought to bolster her 
fainting spirits, but without avail. Miss Herring¬ 
ton had a reputation for sternness very terrifying 
to the hapless Freshmen, who were easily intimi¬ 
dated anyway by reason of the newness and 
strangeness of their surroundings, and Sally, very 
much inclined to be lazy, was guiltily conscious 
of wasted study hours. There was a worried look 


5 4 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


on her face as the geometry class filed into Miss 
Herrington’s classroom from the study hall the 
first period after recess. 

“Oh, if she just won’t call on me,” she prayed 
inwardly. “Maybe she won’t. She called on me 
at the very last recitation. If she doesn’t, she will 
never find out I am unprepared. ’ ’ Cold chills ran 
up and down her back at the thought of answering 
“Unprepared” to any question of Miss Herring¬ 
ton’s. 

That awe-inspiring lady was meanwhile calling 
the roll. 

“Julius Abelman,” she said. 

“Present,” answered one of the boys. 

“Nettie Adams.” 

“Present,” said Nettie. 

“William Baker.” 

“Present.” 

“Alice Bond.” 

“Present.” 

There were only a few A’s, B’s, and C’s before 
Sally Cox’s name on the list. Down through 
Boyle, Carter and Christy read Miss Herrington. 
Sally, lost in her own thoughts, had not noticed that 
she was calling the roll. 

“Sally Cox,” snapped Miss Herrington. 

Sally jumped. The fatal moment seemed to 
have arrived. 

“Unprepared,” she gulped. 

There was a giggle from several of the other 
S-B-double-M’s. But Miss Herrington was not a 
teacher who could appreciate humor in the class¬ 
room. 


MARDEE ANT 


55 


“You have no need to seek for means to inform 
me that you don’t know anything,” she said un¬ 
kindly. Sally had the good sense to realize that 
her words were meant to apply to every one in 
the room and arose from nervousness. Miss 
Herrington was really too nervous a woman to 
teach school. In her impatience with stupidity 
and dread of disorder she “lashed up and down 
like a lion in a cage, ’ ’ as Sally had said, and Sally 
was able to take in the situation and make allow¬ 
ances. 

But the other S-B-double-M’s hailed with de¬ 
light such a joke on one of their number. They 
exchanged glances and turned scarlet in their at¬ 
tempts to keep from laughing. Miss Herrington 
felt the tension and it did not improve her state of 
mind. To cap the climax, the geometry lesson 
that very day took up the subject of lunes, and 
Miss Herrington, totally unable to understand the 
suppressed hilarity with which her remarks on so 
prosy a subject were received, waxed more and 
more acid in temper. 

“One lune may have many little ones,” she set 
forth in her exposition. 

“Yes — seven,” muttered Mardee sotto voce . 

Marilyn, who was sitting in front of her, ex¬ 
ploded with an involuntary snort, and Miss Her¬ 
rington, at the end of her patience, stopped her 
discourse with firmly compressed lips and fixed 
her gaze on poor blushing Marilyn long enough to 
make her the center of attraction. 

“Marilyn Gibson, please take the chair and see 
if you can make the subject of lunes as entertain- 


56 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

ing to the class as it seems to be to you,” she said 
at last sarcastically. 

“Please excuse me, Miss Herrington,” begged 
Marilyn, humbly enough to soften a heart of stone. 

“Perhaps if you sit on the front seat you will 
find it easier to keep your attention on the lesson,” 
Miss Herrington replied, in a somewhat milder 
tone. 

After Marilyn had taken her place on the front 
seat, the S-B-double-M’s made an honest attempt 
to settle down, though Sally did succeed in passing 
a small package containing a clove drop to “Gibs 
in captivity” while Miss Herrington’s back was 
turned, which Marilyn acknowledged in a fervent 
note passed by the same route and declaring that 
the small token of love and trust had been re¬ 
ceived at a moment when her depression of spirit 
would make another token like it extremely ac¬ 
ceptable. 

Altogether, for the S-B-double-M’s that Mon¬ 
day geometry period had been especially success¬ 
ful in driving dull care away. 

Begorry made a valuable contribution to good 
cheer just before the luncheon hour on that same 
day. The Freshman class was addressed during 
the last period of the morning by the Mr. Davis 
who gave the Davis medals, a public-spirited citi¬ 
zen who gave this prize each year to the Freshman 
making the highest average, in memory of a son 
of his who had died while a student in the first 
year of the high school. It was his custom to 
make an address at the beginning of each school 
year explaining the conditions governing the con- 


MARDEE ANT 


57 


test and the ends he desired to accomplish by his 
offer. This morning all the first year classes 
were suspended for one period and the Freshmen 
were assembled in their study hall to hear him. 

Mr. Davis occupied the whole forty-minute 
period with an address on Savonarola. He used 
Savonarola as an example of the scholar, and illus¬ 
trated with his life the result of a thirst for knowl¬ 
edge and application. As Mr. Davis combined an 
enthusiasm for learning with persuasive elo¬ 
quence, he succeeded in holding the attention of 
his hearers and arousing a lively interest in a 
character hitherto unknown to many of them. 

Begorry, who, like the rest, had listened to him 
for forty minutes, inquired of the other S-B- 
double-M’s during the lunch hour: 

“Who was that man Mr. Davis was talking 
about — Simon somebody — sounded like Simon 
Orola?” 

Sally gave a whoop. 

Poor Begorry had chosen the most unfortunate 
audience she could have. The four girls were 
eating their lunch together in the gymnasium in 
the basement. 

“Will you listen to Begorry?” begged Marilyn 
oratorically. 

“Simon Orola!” Mardee repeated after her. 

“First cousin to Simple Simon,’’ Sally explained 
patronizingly. “He was at the fair himself that 
historic day, but had no penny either, owing to 
his strange beliefs.’’ 

“I don’t see what’s so funny, Smart Alec,” 
declared Begorry in the hectoring tone she and 


58 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Sally were accustomed to employ toward one an¬ 
other. 

“Sure!” replied Sally, “for bedad and ain’t 
Simon O’Rola the foine Oirish name?” 

“Begorry, you’ll never live it down,” prophe¬ 
sied Mardee, shaking her head sadly. “Beatrice 
Simon-pure Nut 0 ’Rola Gorham! ’ ’ 

When Marilyn changed the subject by hazard¬ 
ing a guess as to who would win the Davis medal, 
Begorry had not yet been set straight as to Simon 
O’Rola’s real name. 

Branch St. John was Marilyn’s candidate for 
the honor. 

“Branch got the highest marks in our grade 
last year,” she said, “and he’s been so many 
places he just naturally knows more than the rest 
of us.” 

“Why don’t you work for it, Sally?” asked 
Mardee. 

Sally answered her question with another. 

“Why don’t you work for it yourself?” 

‘ ‘ Me ? Why, I could never get it in this world! ’ * 
declared Mardee. 

“You got the next to highest average in the class 
last year. You came next to Branch St. John, 
even though you missed almost a month of school 
when you and Bab had measles. I don’t know 
why you couldn’t get it, ’ ’ Sally maintained stoutly. 

“Oh, but it will be different in the high school, 
with so many more students to beat and the work 
so much harder. And I couldn’t have beaten you 
last year if you had half tried, Sally; you know 
that.” 


MARDEE ANT 


59 


‘ ‘ Well, you did,’ ’ said Sally with finality. ‘ ‘ And 
I ’ll bet a cinnamon bun and three chocolate drops 
you ’ll take the Davis medal, too.” 

The bell rang just then and Mardee said no 
more, but she did not forget Sally’s words. 

“Maybe Mardee Ant could do it if Mardee 
Grasshopper would give her a chance,” she 
thought to herself, as she climbed the two flights 
of steps to the Freshman study hall. 

The Middle and Senior classes shared a study 
hall downstairs. There the Freshmen joined them 
for chapel exercises during the first period every 
morning, sharing the seats with the upper class- 
men, two to a desk, but they had their separate as¬ 
sembly hall upstairs whence they went in groups 
to the smaller class rooms of the teachers. As 
soon as the study hall had filled after lunch, 
Branch St. John arose and walked to the front 
of the room. 

“Fellow Freshmen,” he announced in a loud, 
clear tone, “Professor McKie has given me per¬ 
mission to say a few words to you before we go 
to our classes.” 

It was a most unusual proceeding. Every one 
had looked up in surprise at the sound of his voice 
and cast curious glances from him to Professor 
McKie on the platform behind him in charge of 
the study hall. 

“As you know,” Branch proceeded, “it has al¬ 
ways been the custom for the Middle and Senior 
classes to seek to break up the first meeting of the 
Freshman class and prevent their electing class 
officers and organizing into a body. We shall have 


60 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


to win onr spurs, so to speak. It lias occurred to 
a few of us that this afternoon immediately after 
school would he a good time for us to attempt to 
hold our first meeting. I suggest that when the 
bell rings for dismissal we retain our seats in the 
study hall, elect a temporary chairman, and pro¬ 
ceed with the class elections before the upper 
classes have any means of finding out that we are 
going to hold a meeting. ,, 

“It’s a good suggestion, boys and girls,” Pro¬ 
fessor McKie backed up Branch’s plea. The class 
had already come to regard him as a friend and 
to have the feeling that he held pretty much the 
same point of view that they did with regard to 
school affairs. 

“ Those of you who are in favor of it can keep 
your seats after school, and if we get a quorum we 
can proceed, ’’ Branch concluded, and went back to 
his desk. 

After school the whole class stayed. 

“I move we elect Branch St. John our tempo¬ 
rary chairman , 9 9 said one of the boys who was not 
in Branch’s intimate circle of friends. 

Branch looked troubled, but before he had time 
to say anything some one had seconded the motion 
and it was carried by acclamation. 

To Mardee’s surprise Branch walked over to 
her desk and leaned over to say something in her 
ear. 

“I didn’t want this chairmanship because I had 
planned to propose Roscoe Lawhead’s name for 
class president,” he said hastily. “I think he 
deserves a lot of respect for having the grit to 


MARDEE ANT 61 

come to school when he is so much older than the 
rest of us and has to work out of school hours, and 
I hoped making him president would show him 
that some of us appreciated all that. It occurred 
to me that if I am chairman of the meeting, per¬ 
haps Mardee Ant would be glad of a chance to 
nominate him — after what you said.’ ’ 

1 'Thank you, Branch/’ said Mardee heartily, 
giving him a look of understanding. 

“It may not be easy to elect him. Don and Ed 
McKie and I have electioneered around and found 
some opposition among the boys. Won’t you try 
to speak to as many of the girls as you can before 
we have to vote!” 

Mardee was glad her chance had come so soon 
to do something to make up to Roscoe Lawhead 
for Mardee Grasshopper’s thoughtless slight at 
the party. It was Mardee Ant — a strong and 
sensible Mardee Ant, the Mardee Ant to whom 
Branch St. John had sworn fealty as a belted 
knight — that circulated quietly among the girls, 
explaining the situation to them, pledging their 
votes, and asking each one she spoke to to pass the 
word around her immediate neighborhood, while 
Branch was taking his place on the platform and 
calling the meeting to order. Professor McKie 
went out of the study hall and the room was turned 
over entirely to the class. 

“Nominations are in order for class president,” 
said Branch. 

Mardee jumped to her feet so quickly that the 
boy who was spokesman for the opposite faction 
had hardly started to rise before Branch, already 


62 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

on the lookout in her direction, had recognized her. 

“I nominate as president a boy whom we feel 
will be an influence for the right kind of scholar¬ 
ship in our class and whom the class is proud to 
claim — Roscoe Lawhead,” she said in a voice 
that in spite of the excitement and timidity the 
circumstances had inspired in her was rich and 
warm with the appreciation Branch had made her 
feel and the penitence of Mardee Ant for Mardee 
Grasshopper’s conduct. 

Roscoe, whom Branch had persuaded to stay 
for the meeting, looked up with quick surprise, 
flushed happily, and gave her a glance of humble 
gratitude. 

“Second the motion,” called out Ed McKie 
promptly. 

The other boy who had risen was still on his 
feet, and when Branch had called his name nomi¬ 
nated one of the group Branch had warned Mardee 
against. 

“We will vote by ballot,” announced Branch. 
He appointed a collector for each row of desks, 
who was also to count the votes he took up, and two 
others to check up the totals. Speed was an essen¬ 
tial, for every one momentarily expected a demon¬ 
stration of some sort from the upper classmen, 
who might have had time to get wind of the 
meeting. 

Roscoe Lawhead was elected by a small but safe 
majority and the applause at that announcement 
had just died down when there was a noise as of 
thunder at the double doors on either side of the 
platform. 


MARDEE ANT 


63 


‘‘It’s the Middle and Senior classes!” i 1 Guard 
those doors!” “Don’t let ’em in!” cried a con¬ 
fusion of voices, and, “Nominations are in order 
for vice-president!” rang out Branch’s voice over 
the tumult. 

“I nominate Mardee Gray,” shouted Don. 

“I second the motion,” called quick-witted 
Sally, surprised but ready. 

“Any other nominations?” asked Branch over 
the booming and thumping at the doors. 

There was no reply. 

“All in favor of Mardee Gray for vice-president 
please make it known by saying 4 Aye. ’ ’ ’ 

The concert of “Aye’s” added to the thunder¬ 
ing at the doors was deafening. 

Just then the besiegers, under the leadership of 
Prince Stanley, succeeded in forcing open one of 
the doors, and the Freshman boys poured out to 
prevent their entering and to beat them back down 
the stairs. 

The hall became a seething cauldron of coatless, 
hatless, collarless and generally disheveled boys, 
pushing, shoving, wrestling, fighting, milling back 
and forth, and howling like pandemonium turned 
loose. 

The girls inside the study hall came to the front 
of the room, partly out of curiosity, and partly to 
assist in preventing the entrance of the mob. 

Miss Herrington, who had no sympathy with 
such demonstrations, stood at the door to her 
classroom, tapping in vain upon a little bell. 
When she asked Professor McKie to go and quell 
the riot, that discreet young man, who had been 


64 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

a boy himself not so long before, was reported to 
have rejoined: 

“Not on yonr merry-go-round!’* 

At last the upper classes were beaten back suf¬ 
ficiently for the doors to be closed, and with a 
cordon of Freshmen acting as guard outside, the 
quorum within proceeded to elect a secretary, a 
treasurer, and an editor on the Crow’s Foot , the 
high school annual. 

There was a motion to adjourn and the doors 
were thrown open. The boys outside, though not 
so noisy now, were still blocking the way to the 
head of the girls ’ stairs, and Mardee and the other 
S-B-double-M’s, with their books under their arms, 
found that they could not get through. 

“Won’t you let me pass, please V 9 asked Mardee 
politely of the two boys nearest her. 

“Make way for the ladies!” called out Prince 
Stanley, who had heard her plea. 

“That’s the vice-president,” said some one else, 
recognizing Mardee. 

“Make way for the vice-president!” repeated 
Prince. 

“Make way for the ladies! Make way for the 
vice-president!” the laughing throng about the 
stairs took up the cry. 

* ‘ Speech! Speech! ’ ’ demanded many voices. 

“Poor little me!” gasped Mardee, ducking her 
bobbed head and blushing. 

The crowd fell back before the new vice-presi¬ 
dent like the Red Sea before Moses, except that 
the parted waters continued to shout “Speech! 
Speech!” and a poor frightened little Moses scut- 


MARDEE ANT 


65 

tied through like a scared rabbit with eyes averted 
and cheeks as red as poppies. 

“My! What a celebrity!” exclaimed Marilyn, 
when they had reached the sidewalk. 

“Bedad, an’ we niver appr-r-raciated ye before, 
at all, at all,” laughed Begorry. 

“Pm scared stiff,” declared Mardee. 4 ‘Tell 
me, what does a vice-president have to do?” 

“Pshaw! The vice-president never has to do 
anything,” Sally assured her for her comfort. 
“They just chose you for an ornament.” 

But Mardee went home with a serious feeling 
of responsibility. 

“Days like to-day make me see how much bet¬ 
ter it is to be Mardee Ant than Mardee Grass¬ 
hopper,” she confided to her father over the book 
between her elbows on the table by the study 
lamp. “This was Mardee Ant’s day. And Mar- 
dee Ant is going to take that Davis medal, too — 
you see if she doesn’t.” 


CHAPTER VI 


FOOTBALL AND CHRYSANTHEMUMS 

Mardee Ant had the upper hand for several 
weeks after the Freshman elections. Roscoe 
Lawhead sought her out on the day after the class 
elections. 

“I’ve got to thank you for nominating me yes¬ 
terday. And not only for nominating me, hut 
for the way you nominated me,” he said, with so 
much shy ardor in spite of his awkwardness that 
Mardee felt aglow with virtue. 

Branch St. John, too, seemed to he trying to 
make up for his earlier reproof and never lost an 
opportunity to express his approval now. There 
was something about Branch’s companionship — 
his congenial taste for books, his intelligent con¬ 
versation, his appreciative friendliness — which 
made Mardee Ant’s interests seem attractive in 
his society. 

The high school had settled down now into a 
steady routine, and Doctor Gray was firm in re¬ 
quiring both his daughters to stay at home and 
study on school nights, frolicking only on Fridays 
and Saturdays. 

Mardee Grasshopper was inclined to pout about 
this and feel a little sorry for herself. 

“Daddy, you’re too strict,” she complained. 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 67 


‘‘All the other boys and girls can go places on 
other nights besides Fridays.” 

‘ ‘ All ? ’’ queried her mother. The conversation 
had taken place around the evening lamp in the 
dining-room. Mrs. Gray was darning stockings 
and the two girls were supposed to be getting their 
lessons. 

“Well — nearly all,” amended Mardee. 

Mrs. Gray hummed a bar or two from “Pina¬ 
fore.” “ ‘And I’m never, never sick at sea.’ 
‘What, never?’ ‘No, never!’ ‘What! Never?’ 
‘Well, hardly ever,’ ” she sang with a mischievous 
smile at Mardee, and Mardee was obliged in spite 
of herself to smile. 

It was true that her father’s ruling had pre¬ 
vented her from accepting two or three invitations 
to evening parties which others of her friends 
whose parents were not so careful had at¬ 
tended. 

“But you can’t keep late hours and that peaches- 
and-cream complexion, those dusk-and-violet eyes, 
that sunshine-caught-in-a-mesh hair, and that dew- 
on-a-rosebud mouth, too,” her father reminded 
her with a look as tender and poetic as his words 
and a gentle caress on her head that went far to 
soften his disciplinary measures. “You have not 
learned to value the gifts nature has given you, 
or you would take more care of them, ’ ’ he smiled. 

And it was true that that fairy radiance of early 
girlhood which was Mardee’s had proved a magic 
wand to open many doors to her. Mardee was at¬ 
tracting attention in her new high school sur¬ 
roundings and making new friends. 


68 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

The football season had opened and as the dusty 
Southern September glided into blue and golden 
October, she spent most of her afternoons with the 
other spectators of the practice games on the 
shady benches surrounding the high school ath¬ 
letic field. Early in the season the high school 
team played one or two regular games with local 
grammar school and Y. M. C. A. teams at Colum¬ 
bia Park, the city ball ground, and the first big 
game of the year was scheduled for the second 
Saturday in October with Lakemont, a prep school 
from another town in the same section of the 
State. 

A few days before the game a note was slipped 
into Mardee’s hand during chapel exercises. The 
Freshmen had come downstairs for chapel, and 
Mardee was sitting in a Senior girPs desk with 
her. She could see Tom Adair across on the 
boys ’ side of the room, with a Freshman boy shar¬ 
ing his desk. 

“Dear Mardee: Will you go to the football 
game with me Saturday? Cliff Nash has asked 
Marilyn Gibson, and we four can go out to the 
park together. Tom Adair ,’ 9 Mardee read under 
the cover of the desk. 

Tom Adair, though too light in weight for the 
first team, played on the scrubs, and Cliff Nash 
was business manager. 

She leaned forward and nodded and smiled 
when she found Tom looking at her. 

“I was afraid to wait all day and give Don 
Willis and Branch St. John and Ed McKie and 
those other Freshies in your train a chance to ask 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 69 


you during classes,” he explained, on the way 
home after school. * ‘ Those younger fellows have 
the advantage of me.” 

She had found Tom waiting by one of the posts 
at the foot of the schoolyard steps when she came 
out in the afternoon. His own line went out 
through a side entrance, but he had fallen into 
the habit of hurrying to Mardee ’s gate and waiting 
beside the post until she came by. Mardee could 
see him making a dash for the main entrance the 
minute he reached his own gate, before she left the 
building, and she was never surprised when he 
stepped out from behind the post and dispossessed 
her of her books. From the first night he had 
met her, at Miss Rhinebeck’s party, Tom had 
made no secret of his favoritism, and Mardee 
yielded to the attraction of his half-teasing, half- 
flattering manner and basked in the sunshine of 
his open admiration. He was an attractive boy, 
— fair and slender and just a little girlish in ap¬ 
pearance, though generally considered very hand¬ 
some in the high school, with an easy gallantry 
that made him popular among the girls, and a gift 
for entertaining nonsense. For real fineness of 
character he could not compare with Branch St. 
John, but he was clean-minded and gentlemanly, 
and Mardee liked them both for different reasons. 
It was Mardee Ant who liked Branch and sought 
to live up to the best that was in her to keep his 
good opinion, and Mardee Grasshopper who 
laughed with Tom Adair and danced in the sun¬ 
shine of his nonsensical flattery. 

“What makes you think I’m such a belle?” she 


70 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


answered Ms remark about the competition of 
Don and Branch and Ed. 

“Let me see your hand.” 

Mardee obediently held out one soft and some¬ 
what grimy palm. 

“There it is!” declared Tom, making a deep 
study of the lines in her hand. 4 4 I could see it in 
your face, too — much admiration — many friends 
— a fickle disposition. ’ ’ He shook his head sadly. 

“Now let’s see what’s in your hand,” com¬ 
manded Mardee. 

Tom held out a still grimier paw. 

“Oh, dear, oh, dear!” sighed Mardee mourn¬ 
fully. “And yet I might have seen it in your 
face — a false smile — a flattering tongue!” 

Tom beat his breast dramatically. 

14 Injustice! ” he ranted. 4 4 1 am unappreciated! 
My trusting candor has been derided. Never¬ 
more will I say your face is fair.” 

44 Oh, very well,” shrugged Mardee with exag¬ 
gerated unconcern; 44 nevermore, perhaps, will you 
say my heart is fickle. It is well to be on our 
guard against each other.” 

4 4 Honors are even, ’ ’ laughed Tom, coming down 
to earth as they caught up with another group 
going home from school and fell in with them. 
The sidewalks along Channing Avenue just at tMs 
time of day were lively with groups of boys and 
girls going home from school. The high school 
was on Eighth Street, which crossed Channing 
Avenue, but Channing Avenue was the main resi¬ 
dential thoroughfare of the city and most of the 
high school boys and girls followed it for a part 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 71 

of their way home, at any rate. The Grays lived 
three blocks off Channing Avenue on a shady and 
narrow side street called Green Street. At Mar- 
dee’s corner she and Tom bade good-by to the 
others and strolled slowly down the hill towards 
her home. 

“I’ll be here at two o’clock on Saturday,” Tom 
said, as they parted. “If the pater’s heart hap¬ 
pens to be in the right place when the day comes 
we’ll ride out to the park in a car. If he can’t 
be made to listen to reason, we ’ll have a motorman 
for our chauffeur and ride in the people’s limou¬ 
sine. ’ ’ 

“Better be a good boy and keep on the right 
side of him all this week, ’ ’ advised Mardee, laugh¬ 
ing. 

Tom evidently took her advice, for on Saturday 
afternoon he drove up to the door in the car which 
Mardee knew was his father’s little business run¬ 
about. Cliff and Marilyn were already on the 
seat beside him, resplendent in purple and white 
ribbons, a purple and white high school pennant 
on a cane in Cliff’s hands, and two chrysanthe¬ 
mums — a purple one and a white one — pinned to 
Marilyn’s coat. 

“Aren’t we fine?” demanded Marilyn, reaching 
for the cane and giving the pennant a flourish. 

“Hurrah for us!” responded Mardee, return¬ 
ing the salute with a wave of the satin streamers 
in her own hand. 

“There are two more chrysanthemums here for 
you,” announced Tom, producing a long florist’s 
box. “We went by Daly’s as we came up.” 


72 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Mardee opened the box and took out the two 
great handsome flowers with squeals of delight. 

‘ ‘ Climb in, ’’ Clift invited her. He had climbed 
out himself, during the presentation of Tom’s 
floral offering. “It’s me for the running board.” 

“Oh, Cliff, you’ll fall off,” Mardee protested, 
nevertheless squeezing herself into the space he 
had vacated. 

“Just like this. See!” And Cliff seated him¬ 
self on the floor with his feet stuck out through 
the open door. 

Cliff Nash was a complete contrast in appear¬ 
ance to his chum. His dark complexion, heavy 
brows, and prominent high-bridged nose had led 
Sally Cox to characterize him as a pirate of the 
Spanish Main, and the apt characterization had 
been repeated and become very generally known. 
Cliff had found Marilyn’s rebellious discontent as 
interesting in its way as had Tom Mardee’s sweet 
girlishness, and the two were as often together as 
Tom and Mardee. Altogether, they made a very 
congenial foursome. 

“We want you two girls to whoop ’em up for 
the home team like all creation!” said Cliff on 
the way to the ball park. 

But no such request was needed. Both Mardee 
and Marilyn were in the best of good spirits and 
ran up and down the side lines in the caressing 
autumn sunshine, following the plays and shouting 
encouragement to the players. 

The big crowd was of course in sympathy with 
the high school, and from the first the game went 
against the visitors. But both sides played real 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 73 


football, and the Lakemont team was made up of 
well-bred boys and clean players who accepted de¬ 
feat with a good grace. 

At the end of the first quarter, Mardee and Tom, 
with Marilyn and Cliff and some of the other girls 
and boys, Sally and Begorry among them, stopped 
by the lines near the spot where the visiting team 
was resting on the grass. Their coach was ha¬ 
ranguing them, but one of the players on the out¬ 
skirts of the group caught sight of Mardee laugh¬ 
ing with her friends. She did make a pretty pic¬ 
ture—^eyes sparkling, teeth flashing, tam-o’-shan¬ 
ter rakishly awry, her whole slim body swaying 
as lightly as grass in the wind — and it was evi¬ 
dent that he was paying more attention to her 
than to his coach. Mardee, spinning on her heel, 
happened to catch his eye and broke off in the 
midst of a laughing remark to shake her colors in 
his face and repeat: 

“Hurrah for us!” 

Laughing, he replied: “I wish you would give 
me those chrysanthemums.” 

“No,” answered Mardee, “but I’ll bet them 
against your noseguard that you won’t win the 
game. ’ ’ 

“Make it your purple and white ones against 
a dozen yellow ones and I’ll take you.” 

The Lakemont colors were green and gold. 

Mardee agreed, amidst much laughter from the 
bystanders, and just then the referee blew his 
whistle for the next quarter to begin. 

After the game had ended in a high school vic¬ 
tory Professor McKie, who was the high school 


74 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


coach, and Cliff Nash took the visiting team around 
to introduce them to some of the girls, and Mar- 
dee met the player she had made the bet with. 
His name was Philip Bolling. 

“It isn’t fair to beat you and take your flow¬ 
ers, too,” she smiled, as she gave him her hand. 
“I release you from your debt.” 

“But you won’t give me your flowers?” begged 
her football friend. 

“No, these were a gift.” 

Just then Cliff came up. 

“Some of the high school fellows are getting 
up a dance for to-night in honor of the visitors,” 
he said. 

“Go with me, Mardee?” asked Tom quickly. 
He had been standing near her and had turned to 
her when Cliff spoke. 

“Marilyn is going with me,” added Cliff. 
“Let’s all four go together.” 

“Oh, goody — I’d love to!” was Mardee’s sat¬ 
isfying, if informal acceptance. 

“What will you give me, then?” Philip Bolling 
persisted, as soon as the interruption was over. 

“How about a dance to-night? Would that 
do?” 

“I couldn’t keep that,” he objected. “But 
make it two, and we’ll talk about it to-night.” 

So Mardee agreed. 

She was too breathless with excitement to want 
any supper. A football game, a new friend, and 
a dance all in one day! But Doctor Gray insisted 
upon her eating something. 

While the family was at the supper table the 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 75 


doorbell rang, and Bab, who had answered it, came 
back into the dining-room bearing a florist’s box, 
— the second for Mar dee on this wonderful day, 
and an enormous one this time. 

“For you, Mardee,” announced Bab, all agog. 
“A messenger brought it.” 

Mardee seized it eagerly and laid it on the table, 
on top of the dishes at her place. Hastily she 
opened it, and there, in a nest of asparagus fern 
and glowing warmly in the light from overhead, 
lay twelve huge yellow chrysanthemums. 

Mardee gathered them to her breast exultantly. 

“Philip Bolling,” read Bab, holding up the 
card. The family had already heard the story of 
the football player. 

“I never saw so many flowers in my life, and I’m 
going to carry them every one to-night,” pro¬ 
nounced Mardee, smiling triumphantly over her 
great armful of flowers. 

“My! Won’t you look like a walking chrysan¬ 
themum show?” said Bab. 

The flowers almost hid the organdie party 
dress, but they made a wonderful setting for the 
radiant face above them. 

Doctor Gray took Mardee and Tom in his 
automobile to the high school, where the dance 
was to be held in the girls ’ gymnasium. 

“The young man that escorts this little daugh¬ 
ter of mine around has to escort her old daddy, 
too,” he always said, “and since that is the case 
we might as well go in my car.” He always 
showed up at half-past ten to take Mardee and her 
escort home, too. 


76 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“Oh, Mardee!” whispered Marilyn, when Mar- 
dee met her at the door of the gymnasium, smil¬ 
ing over the heads of the chrysanthemums. 
“From your football friend?” 

“Oh, wirra, wirra, the darlint she looks!” ex¬ 
claimed Begorry, holding up both palms. 

* ‘ Solomon iahg!” gasped Sally. 

“Solomon in all his glory — that’s easy,” in¬ 
terpreted Marilyn. 

“No — the Incomparable!’* laughed Begorry — 
for the S-B-double-M’s had never ceased to tease 
Mardee about her part in the charades at Miss 
Rhinebeck’s party. 

* ‘ When are you going to give me a dance, Mar- 
dee ?” asked Don. 

“I have the first with Tom,” she answered. 
“But you may have the second.” 

“And where do I come in?” inquired Cliff. 

“I’ll have to save one near the first for Philip 
Bolling,” Mardee demurred, rescuing her card 
from him. The excitement and popularity and 
compliments had gone to her head. It was Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper who was chattering, flushed and 
sparkling, with the group of boys around her. 

She had all of her dances engaged — two ac¬ 
cording to her agreement with Philip Bolling — 
when the home boys decided that on account of the 
number of stags the visitors were not getting 
enough dances, and turned the dance into a game 
of Paul Jones. After that, Mardee, dancing with 
her great bunch of flowers over one arm, never got 
more than halfway around the room with one 
partner. 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 77 

But Philip Bolling protested. 

“Look here, Miss Mardee,” he demanded, 
“where do my two dances come in?” 

“I could sit them out with you,” suggested Mar- 
dee. “It would take at least that long to tell you 
how pretty the chrysanthemums are.” 

“No, I don’t want to be a pig and keep the 
other fellows from dancing with you. And I’d 
rather dance than sit it out. I like dancing 
with you. But if we dance, then somebody is 
sure to take you away from me, and the last 
fellow you dance with has the intermission with 
you.” 

i ‘ But you know I always like to have you come 
up in the intermission. ’ ’ 

“Yes — if I can get in anywhere on the out¬ 
skirts of the ring! Oh, you popular girls! But 
I tell you what I can do if you’ll agree. I have 
a ‘buddy’ on the team — John Graves. John and 
I will start in when the music has played just 
about so long — I’ll break in on the fellow you’re 
dancing with — then if anybody breaks on me 
John will break on him and give you back to me. 
In that way, one or the other of us will be pretty 
sure to be dancing with you when the music 
stops.” 

Mardee agreed, and the scheme worked like a 
charm. Either Philip Bolling or John Graves was 
dancing with her at the end of every dance, and 
the other Lakemont boys, seeing her with one of 
their number, flocked around her in the intermis¬ 
sions. 

“See here — this thing happens too regularly 


78 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


to be accidental! ’ ’ Tom Adair complained to Philip 
Bolling at last. “We want you fellows to have a 
good time and all that, but you can’t take our 
prettiest girl away from us entirely.” 

Mardee blushed at the compliment and the Lake- 
mont boys grew more determined than ever. 
They were still engaged in a desperate battle for 
her dances when half-past ten and Doctor Gray 
arrived. 

“It’s enough to turn a more experienced head,” 
he reflected, as he watched his little girl bobbing 
about like one of her great bunch of flowers, her 
lithe body swaying to the music, the new white 
slippers sliding rhythmically, as light as thistle¬ 
down. 

“Too many boys to-night, aren’t there?” he 
inquired dryly, when Mardee and her partner 
brought up smiling beside him at a crashing final 
chord of the music. “Not enough girls to go 
around — I never saw such belles in my life! 
Makes ordinary, everyday affairs seem pretty 
humdrum, doesn’t it?” 

Mardee looked up into his eyes with an under¬ 
standing twinkle in her own. 

“I am Mardee Grasshopper, am I?” she asked, 
fully comprehending his intention of giving her 
vanity a sly jolt. 

“You are writing the story of your life, you 
know, with Mardee Ant as the heroine, and Mar- 
dee Grasshopper as the villain. This seems to be 
one of those chapters when the villain is getting in 
some powerful licks. Let’s go home now — and 
end the chapter. ’ ’ 


FOOTBALL-CHRYSANTHEMUMS 79 


But it was not a very penitent looking Mardee 
Grasshopper who followed him out of the gym¬ 
nasium, nodding to right and left over her flowers 
and smiling a good night to every one she passed. 


CHAPTER VII 


ON CROW’S NEST MOUNTAIN 

Mardee had just fallen into a sound sleep the 
night of the dance for the Lakemont boys when she 
was awakened by a terrific noise. To her startled 
senses, still confused by sleep, it seemed to have 
been a piercing shriek. That Seldom Fed had 
heard it too was plain, for he was in a fever of 
audible protest down in the back hall, where he 
had been locked up for the night, and his barking 
added to the general confusion and made it still 
harden for Mardee to tell just exactly what she 
had heard. Of one thing she was sure. She 
could hear the babble of many voices in the street 
outside. 

i ‘ Do you hear something, Bab f’ ’ she whispered, 
clutching her sister in the dark. 

“Did you take me for a corpse1” demanded 
Bab. “Don’t be frightened, Silly. Nobody’s 
trying to slip up on us, and it can’t get any worse 
than it is already.” 

Just then there was another shriek. Mardee 
could see the reasonableness of Bab’s philosophy. 
Nothing could possibly make any more noise, and 
they were not hurt yet. It was hard to frighten 
steady little Bab. The shriek was repeated over 
and over again and seemed to be coming closer. 


ON CROW’S NEST MOUNTAIN 81 

Seldom Fed’s protests increased to frenzy. But 
the two girls, straining their ears, could make out 
that the mingled voices out in the street were 
laughing and catcalling and shouting “Whoa!” 
and “Get up!” and less intelligible long sentences 
in which “Lakemont” and “High School” seemed 
to have a part. 

“ Oh! ” breathed Mardee with relief. “It’s just 
the boys celebrating their football victory.” She 
loosened her grip on Bab and the two sprang out 
of bed and knelt by the open window. 

“It’s a willopus wallopus!” exclaimed Bab. 

Outside, an enormous road roller had come to 
a stop before the Grays’ steps, belching forth 
smoke and glowing horribly when its engine door 
was opened for more coal. It was overflowing 
with boys,— on the driver’s seat, on the steps, on 
top, in front, and behind. Hitched to it was a 
wagon filled with chairs, and that, too, had the ap¬ 
pearance of being encrusted with boys. 

“All aboard for Lakemont!” shouted several 
would-be conductors of the football special. 

“C. H. S. Bah! Rah! 

C. H. S. Rah! Rah! 

Hurrah! Hurrah! 

Channingsburg! Channingsburg! 

Rah! Rah! Rah! 

“What’s the matter with us? 

We’re all right! 

Who’s all right? 

Channingsburg High! 

Who says so ? 

Lakemont! ’ ’ 


82 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Bab had slipped downstairs and brought Sel¬ 
dom Fed up from the back hall. He had come 
vociferously, and standing at the window with his 
front paws on the sill he scolded the football rooters 
angrily. 

Doctor and Mrs. Gray had come in from their 
room and taken a stand behind the girls, screened 
by the window curtains. Lights could be seen 
flashing in the windows all over the quiet neighbor¬ 
hood. 

44 Giddap! All aboard for Lakemont ! 7 7 shouted 
a dozen voices at last, and there was a clanking 
and groaning, a succession of ear-splitting shrieks 
from the whistle, and the monster lumbered down 
the street to bear the news of victory to other 
parts of the city. 

“Where do you suppose they got that thing V 7 
laughed Mardee, turning to the rest of the family 
when the uproar had subsided. 

“They are paving those new streets in Benton 
Place ,’ 7 said Bab. 

4 4 The boys must have fired the thing up and 
come all the way from Benton Place,” hazarded 
Doctor Gray. 

He and Mrs. Gray went back to bed, and Bab, 
after dragging Seldom Fed by the collar down to 
his rug in the back hall, crawled in beside Mardee 
and the house settled down to sleep. 

The next morning the road roller passed again 
before breakfast, going back the way it had come, 
but manned this time by an overalled crew, and 
Don Willis, who had come out on his front porch 
to watch its progress, doubled up with laughter. 


ON CROW’S NEST MOUNTAIN 83 


4 ‘How far did yon go with it last night?” Mar- 
dee called across from the Grays’ front porch. 

“We didn’t get far beyond here,” Don confided, 
between bursts of mirth. “Somebody had tele¬ 
phoned the police station. I wish you’d seen the 
boys falling off the willopus wallopus when they 
were tipped off that the coppers were chasing 
them. ’ ’ 

Soon after breakfast that morning the telephone 
rang and Mardee, who answered it, recognized 
Philip Bolling’s voice. 

44 1 am at the station, ’ ’ he told her. 4 4 Our train 
pulls out in ten minutes, but I couldn’t leave town 
without saying good-by.” 

4 4 Good-by, Philip,” laughed Mardee. 4 4 You’re 
a good scout and I hope Lakemont will win all the 
rest of her games.” 

4 4 Say, I got something to remember you by. ’ ’ 

“You did?” 

4 4 Yes. I pulled off the head of one of your 
chrysanthemums. To me you’ll always be my 
little chrysanthemum friend.” 

44 Seems to me,” opined Mardee, 44 that after 
your generous box of flowers I’d always remember 
you as my chrysanthemum friend.” 

4 4 Well — so long. Save me a dance if I make 
the baseball team and come back in the spring.” 

“I will,” promised Mardee, and with another 
44 good-by” Philip hung up the receiver. 

The effect of the previous day’s gayety had 
been to give Mardee Grasshopper a strangle hold 
on Mardee Ant, and Mardee Ant was long in gain¬ 
ing the advantage. For one reason, Mardee saw 


84 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

more and more of Tom Adair after the Lakewood 
game and dance, and Tom always appealed to the 
frivolous, butterfly side of her nature. 

Late in October, when the skies were their deep¬ 
est blue and the autumn woods their warmest reds 
and yellows, Marilyn Gibson had a house party on 
Crow’s Nest Mountain and invited Mardee and 
Tom and Cliff Nash. 

Marilyn’s mother was fond of entertaining. 
She and her older daughter, Rosemary, who was 
six years Marilyn’s senior, moved in a fashion¬ 
able set, and the week-end parties which they gave 
at their elaborate mountain cottage, as well as the 
more formal functions at their pretentious home 
down in the city, were considered very smart. 

This particular house party, however, was 
“only a family affair”, as Mrs. Gibson told Mrs. 
Gray over the telephone when she invited Mardee. 

“Saturday is Mr. Gibson’s birthday,” she ex¬ 
plained. “He always likes to get out of town for 
a week-end in the autumn before the leaves have 
fallen, and he nearly always takes a little vacation 
from business at our cottage on Crow’s Nest. He 
does not enjoy formal social functions in celebra¬ 
tion of his birthday, but nothing would please him 
more than to have a party of Marilyn’s little 
friends go up with us on Friday afternoon to stay 
through Sunday. ’ ’ 

“Mardee will appreciate Marilyn’s thinking of 
her,” said Mrs. Gray, her quiet tone in marked 
contrast to Mrs. Gibson’s studied vivacity. 

“She chose Mardee and Tom Adair and Cliff 
Nash. Those four seem to have been together a 


ON CROW’S NEST MOUNTAIN 85 

good deal this fall, and I am glad of the associa¬ 
tion for Marilyn. She has been so moody and dis¬ 
contented since she got old enough to realize what 
her complexion means to her that I am glad of an 
interest that takes her out of herself.” The af¬ 
fected voice had ended on a note of genuine con¬ 
cern and Mrs. Gray accepted the invitation for 
Mardee with a warmer cordiality than she would 
have had it not been for the appeal from one 
mother to another. 

A great many Channingsburg people had sum¬ 
mer homes on the near-by mountains. Chan¬ 
ningsburg was delightfully situated, for a south¬ 
ern city, in a valley encircled by mountains, which 
enabled its residents to escape during the hot 
months to summer homes where, though living in 
a cooler climate, they were yet near enough the 
town for the men of the family to go back and 
forth to business every day. There was a colony 
of such homes on Crow’s Nest. The Grays had 
one,— a simple rustic shack back in the woods and 
therefore in a less fashionable neighborhood than 
the Gibsons’, which was near the hotel. There 
were similar colonies on High Top and Chestnut 
Ridge, two other peaks near the city. 

Marilyn’s house party, consisting of Mr. and 
Mrs. Gibson, Marilyn’s sister Rosemary, Marilyn, 
Mardee, Tom, and Cliff, left town on Friday after¬ 
noon in two automobiles, Mr. Gibson and the young 
people in one car, and Mrs. Gibson and the serv¬ 
ants, with the supplies, including a monster tur¬ 
key for the birthday dinner, in another. Mrs. 
Gibson was an experienced and delightful hostess. 


86 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


By the time the second automobile, containing the 
guests, had arrived, the house was all ready for 
them, with a big wood fire blazing in the living- 
room, an inviting odor of cooking emanating from 
the kitchen, and a cozy, “lived-in” air about all 
of the bedrooms. 

“Three cheers for Crow’s Nest!” cried Mr. Gib¬ 
son, throwing his cap into the air and, capering 
about like a boy the minute he stepped into the 
house. “I feel ten years younger when I get out 
of sight of the store and breathe the air of this 
mountain top. I bet I could pile those two rock¬ 
ing-chairs together and take off my shoes and 
jump over them. Let’s see you do it, Cliff!” 

“Give me leave to jump from the stairs there?” 
asked Cliff, laughing and pointing to the top of the 
stairs, which went up across the back of the liv¬ 
ing-room. 

“Oh, no. Oh, no.” 

“Well, you’re younger than I, sir, then, or at 
any rate a better jumper,” declared Cliff, for Mr. 
Gibson had set one chair inside of the other and 
together they reached almost up to the chandelier. 

“Don’t you believe I can do it?” asked Mr. Gib¬ 
son. 

“I won’t say you can’t, sir,” replied Cliff, to 
whom he had addressed all his questions, while the 
others looked on and laughed. 

“Want to see me try?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“ I ’ll give you a chance at it first, if you want to 
try.” Mr. Gibson was already removing his 
shoes. 


ON CROW'S NEST MOUNTAIN 87 

4 4 Oh, no, thank you, sir. ' ' 

He carefully placed the two shoes side by side 
on the hearthrug, then toed an imaginary mark, 
swung his arms violently, and jumped — over the 
shoes. 

“There! I told you I could pile those two 
chairs on top of each other, take off my shoes and 
jump over them. Sorry you're not such a good 
jumper, old man.” 

In the burst of hilarity that ensued, Mr. Gibson 
beckoned to Mardee and handed her his automo¬ 
bile cap with a few whispered words. Tom, who 
was pounding Cliff on the shoulder, and Marilyn 
and Rosemary did not see Mardee rub the top of 
the cap in the soot at the back of the wide stone 
fireplace. It was a dark wool mixture, and the 
resulting smudge was not in the least noticeable. 

“Yes, sir!” Mr. Gibson was boasting, with a 
swagger. “I'm a better jumper than you young 
fellows, and I'm just as sound in wind and limb. 
Now, Tom, let's see if your teeth are any stronger 
than mine. Mardee, hand me that cap, please.” 

Mardee gave him the cap, which he handled 
carefully by the clean visor. 

“Now I will stick this pin through the top — so 
— and I want to see if you can pull it out with 
your teeth.” 

Tom obediently took the cap and pressed his 
face against it to get a firm hold on the pin. 

When in triumph he withdrew the pin he was 
completely at a loss to understand the shout that 
greeted his appearance, and not until Marilyn led 
him to a mirror and he saw for himself the effect 


88 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


of the black daubs on his pink cheeks and fair 
forehead did the look of astonishment leave his 
face. 

“Are you children all ready for supper?” asked 
Mrs. Gibson, coming down the stairs. 

“ No’m. Tom ’s all dirty,’ ’ giggled Mardee, and 
Mrs. Gibson, joining in the laugh, led him away 
to soap and water before supper was announced. 

For the evening Mrs. Gibson had arranged a 
guessing game of “Literary Titles” in which the 
titles were suggested by small objects or pictures 
attached to numbered cards. 

“The Mill on the Floss” was represented by a 
mill pinned to a skein of sewing silk; ‘ ‘ The Mon¬ 
astery” was shown by means of a picture of a 
cloistered building with monks in evidence; a 
bearded and booted fellow in a Russian blouse and 
a miniature garden hoe, depicted “Ivanhoe”; 
some people alighting from a train with traveling 
bags in their hands were meant to be “The New- 
comes.” 

“This fellow looks like Cliff,” declared Tom, 
puzzling over a villainous-looking outlaw in top 
boots and slouch hat, with a knife in his mouth. 

“I know! I know! ‘The Pirate!’ guessed 
Mardee, but tenderheartedly refrained from ex¬ 
plaining that the name was suggested by Sally’s 
description of Cliff. 

Cliff was not slow to take revenge. 

“Why, here’s a picture of Tom!” he cried, 
pointing out a card intended to portray ‘ ‘ Travels 
with a Donkey.” 

“The girls will have to tell us what this one is 


ON CROW’S NEST MOUNTAIN 89 

meant for,” said Tom, when the laugh at his ex¬ 
pense had subsided. The card he referred to was 
decorated with a dorine and a transfer ticket. 

44 Anybody would know what it was meant for,” 
protested Cliff. i ‘ This part is meant to do this 
with,” and looking into the mirror with a* simper¬ 
ing smile meant to imitate the smirk of a girl pow¬ 
dering her nose, he gave mincing dabs at his own 
protruding beak with the tiny powder puff. 

“Goodness nose!” jibed Tom. 

1 ‘Somebody bring some more powder!” begged 
Marilyn. “ There can’t be enough in the box to 
cover Cliff’s nose.” 

4 ‘ And this part is meant to take a ride on, ’ ’ pro¬ 
ceeded Cliff, unmoved by their banter, and indi¬ 
cating the transfer ticket. “Now the only thing 
left to decide is, what book has a name anything 
like ‘A Beautiful Car Ride.’ ” 

“ ‘Beautiful’ is all wrong, old man. You 
couldn’t see yourself, ’ ’ Tom.corrected him. ‘ ‘ The 
conceit of some people!” 

4 ‘ Maybe Tom is getting warm, ’ ’ mused Mardee. 
‘ ‘ Conceit is vanity, and a dorine is a vanity box. ’ ’ 

“Hooray! And a transfer ticket is a fare. 
‘Vanity Fair.’ Now who says I haven’t a right 
to be conceited?’’ demanded Cliff. “I’d rather be 
smart than pretty.” 

“Hamlet” was set forth in the picture of a ham 
cut out of the advertising section of some maga¬ 
zine, and a “For Rent” sign. 

‘ ‘ Yum-yum! The ham what am! ’ ’ gloated Tom. 
“I’d rather buy it outright than rent it.” 

‘ ‘ I bet this is what would happen to you if you 


90 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


did,” laughed Mardee, holding up a realistic por¬ 
trait of a nightmare jabbing some hapless sleeper 
with a pitchfork, and serving to illustrate “A 
Midsummer Night’s Dream.” 

Mardee lost the card on which she was supposed 
to be writing her answers, and when she found 
it again it was nearly filled with handwriting that 
was plainly Mr. Gibson’s. But that gentleman, 
when she looked at him, was going through an 
elaborate pantomime of shutting one eye and lay¬ 
ing his forefinger on his lips, and she entered into 
a conspiracy of silence with him. When it de¬ 
veloped that there were prizes, however, and Mar- 
dee won the first, a copy of 4 ‘The Hundred Best 
Books,” she was sorry she had not given him 
away. 

“It will be ours together,” she whispered to 
him apologetically. “You read it and then I’ll 
read it and then you read it and then I’ll read 
it — ” 

“Until after a while we shall both become ad¬ 
dicted. to the habit of reading ‘ The Hundred Best 
Books’,” he finished for her, evidently as de¬ 
lighted with the nonsense as she was. “What a 
good thing the prize wasn’t anything that could 
form a pernicious habit — ‘The Hundred Worst 
Books’, for instance.” 

“Let’s play charades,” Marilyn had meanwhile 
proposed. “Let Clift and Tom be the captains.” 

Clift chose Mardee and Mr. Gibson; Tom, Mari¬ 
lyn, Mrs. Gibson, and Rosemary. 

Tom’s side had the first turn and presented 
“grateful”, with Rosemary putting on airs as a 


ON CROW’S NEST MOUNTAIN 91 


“great’’ person and Tom going through antics 
that showed he was “full.” Then Cliff’s side put 
on “cantaloup” with Mardee and Cliff prevented 
by a watchful father from eloping; and Tom’s side 
came back with “humbug.” But the histrionic 
triumph of the evening was “Roman”, enacted by 
Mr. Gibson, Mardee, and Cliff. 

First they all came out and stood in a row. 
The others guessed “three” and then “line”, and 
Mr. Gibson, thinking they were coming too close, 
went through some mystic gestures to lead them 
astray. Mr. Gibson appeared alone in the syllable 
“man” but to keep it from being too easy to 
guess he hopped in like a frog. Then Cliff came 
in, wrapped in a tablecloth toga, and instantly 
Tom recognized his nationality. 

“You didn’t need the toga with that Roman 
nose*” he shouted. “If anybody else had come 
in dressed up like that we might have had to guess 
a while, particularly after Mr. Gibson had made 
us think he was a frog instead of a man, but to 
send in the old Roman himself was a dead give- 
away. ’ ’ 

At the top of the stairs leading up from the 
living-room a railing ran the length of the upper 
hall parallel to the staircase. At bedtime every 
one went into the dining-room to* eat some fudge 
before going to bed, and it happened that the 
three girls started up the stairs- first and without 
any malicious intent whatever sat down on the 
top step to talk a while. When Mr. Gibson and 
the boys came they looked so* suspiciously at the 
barrier above them that it put an idea into the 


92 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


girls’ heads, and they stiffened out in a row to 
prevent their passing. 

A lively'tussle ensued, but finally, after a whis¬ 
pered consultation, the three boys — for Mr. 
Gibson on that night was no more grown up than 
the others — climbed over the railing into the up¬ 
per hall, made a surprise attack on the girls from 
the rear, bore them shrieking and kicking down 
the stairs again, deposited them in the living- 
room, and then ran back to establish themselves 
in a forbidding row upon the top step. 

“Ho! Ho! Now who can’t get upstairs?” 
they taunted. And when Mrs. Gibson, who had 
gone to the kitchen for some last housewifely rites, 
joined the girls in the living-room, the boys made 
all four of them climb over the railing into the up¬ 
per hall before they could get to their rooms to go 
to bed. 


CHAPTER Vni 


A BIRTHDAY DIN HER AND A SCARE 

Mr. Gibson ’s birthday dawned crisp and frosty, 
— one of those perfect fall days that convince one 
autumn is the loveliest season of the year. 

Marilyn, looking between the cretonne curtains 
of the dormer window beside the bed she shared 
with Mardee, saw her father shaking the persim¬ 
mon tree in the front yard. 

“Wake up, Mard. Here’s a chance to give Dad 
his birthday licks before breakfast,” she ex¬ 
claimed, springing out on the cold floor and hug¬ 
ging a warm bathrobe about her. 

“I brought a little present for him in my suit¬ 
case — just a handkerchief I embroidered with his 
initials — and I thought I’d slip that under his 
plate at breakfast,” said Mardee, following Mari¬ 
lyn’s example and tailing a look out of the window 
as she got up. “Oh, look how white the frost 
looks! Just like snow! ’ ’ 

Dressing was the work of but a few minutes, 
but by the time the two had pulled on their warm 
sweaters and tam-o ’-shanters and slipped down to 
the dining-room to deposit their birthday pack¬ 
ages in the already considerable pile by Mr. Gib¬ 
son’s plate, they found that Tom and Cliff had 
beaten them outdoors and were eating persimmons 
under the tree with Mr. Gibson. 


94 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“Fifty licks, Dad — and one to grow on,” 
threatened Marilyn, as they opened the front door. 

“Need any help, sir?” offered Cliff, and picking 
up a handful of green persimmons fired them in 
rapid succession toward the porch. 

“ Oh! Oh! ” cried Marilyn, ducking and throw¬ 
ing up her arms to protect her head, but Mardee 
seized a pillow out of the swing and aimed a tell¬ 
ing shot directly at Cliff’s head. He looked 
around just in time to get it full in the face, and 
while Tom stopped gathering green persimmons 
to laugh at Cliff’s discomfiture, the girls took ad¬ 
vantage of their opportunity to scurry off the 
porch and barricade themselves within a scupper- 
nong arbor in the yard at the side of the house. 

Mr. Gibson joined forces with the boys and to¬ 
gether they stormed the arbor with persimmons. 
It was built in the form of a summer house with 
two entrances, which made of it an excellent forti¬ 
fication. No matter which side the attacking 
party advanced from, the defenders of the fort 
could easily dodge around to the other, and if the 
besiegers divided and came from both sides at 
once, the besieged could slip inside and hurl scup- 
pernongs out of the doorways. It is true that the 
girls ’ missiles very rarely hit their mark, but they 
were beginning to be very chesty about their suc¬ 
cess in warding off their opponents’ shots when a 
cracked “Tinkle, tinkle” in the woods gave Mr. 
Gibson an idea. 

“Now watch me make ’em run!” he boasted, 
laughing in high glee. 

“Sook, Bossy! Sook, Bossy!” he called entic- 


A BIRTHDAY DINNER 95 

ingly, and a mild-eyed stray cow wandered toward 
him out of the woods. Stepping behind her he 
uttered a commanding “Soy!” which sent her in 
the direction of the arbor. With shrieks of terror 
the erstwhile bold garrison deserted its post and 
ran pell-mell for the kitchen, abandoning the idea 
of the fifty licks and one to grow on. Thence they 
issued forth no more until two heads were put out 
of a narrow crack in the kitchen door to announce 
to the laughing enemy: 

“Sausage and waffles! You’d better come in if 
you don’t want to miss something grand.” 

Opening the presents was a ceremony which took 
so much time that Mrs. Gibson was finally obliged 
to shoo her family away from the breakfast table 
to clear the decks for the birthday dinner prepara¬ 
tions. The masculine contingent went hunting and 
Marilyn and Mardee begged Mrs. Gibson to put 
them to work in the kitchen. As a matter of fact, 
nearly all the preparations had been made days 
before. Mrs. Gibson was a far-seeing housewife 
and hostess. She had brought to the mountain 
with her jars and boxes and bowls of everything 
that could possibly be carried already prepared, 
and although she allowed the girls to cut the grape¬ 
fruits and put the candles on the cake and do a 
few other little odd jobs which would satisfy their 
craving to be in the thick of the interesting pro¬ 
ceedings, there really was not enough to keep 
them busy for long, and they wandered off to the 
dining-room. 

“Let us write the place cards for you, Mamma,” 
begged Marilyn. Mrs. Gibson had come in with a 


96 


MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


package of the hand-painted place cards she al¬ 
ways kept a supply of. 

‘ 4 Certainly, ’ * she replied, and counted out seven 
into Marilyn’s outstretched hand. 

“Let’s put a rhyme on each one instead of just 
the name,” suggested Mardee. 

“Oh, Mardee, you really are possessed of genius 
to think of such a ripping thing! It will give us 
a chance to get back at the hoys for all the tricks 
they have played on us.” Marilyn fished two 
pencils out of the desk in the living-room, and the 
two girls curled up on the chimney seat to try out 
their poetical effusions on scraps of waste paper. 

It took a great deal of rhyming and consultation 
and scratching out and rewriting to evolve the 
finished product of their united efforts, and the 
work was interrupted by many spasms of mirth. 

“Oh, listen to this for Cliff!” cried Marilyn, 
after having covered the back of an envelope with 
tentative couplets: 

‘‘ This seat is for you, Clifford Nash, 

Which proves Mrs. Gibson quite rash; 

When you’ve eaten your share 
She won’t have, I declare, 

Any left for to make turkey hash. ’ ’ 

“Oh, splendid!” approved Mardee. “Nowlet’s 
get some joke on Tom.” 

“About the stairs! To pay him back for mak¬ 
ing us climb the railing! Stair rhymes with 
Adair,” cried Marilyn hopefully. 

“How’s this!” offered Mardee: 


97 


A BIRTHDAY DINNER 

“Here sits a young man named Adair, 

Who really should eat on the stair; 

He sits there so tight 
At bedtime at night 
He does not deserve this good chair.’’ 

They fell on each other’s neck in mutual con¬ 
gratulation and bobbed up and down so enthusi¬ 
astically they could hardly write the lines. 

“Now let’s fix Dad,” giggled Marilyn. 

“Here goes,” Mardee complied: 

“Papa Gibs, the jumping jack, 

May have this chair, seat, arms and back, 

Unless perchance he feels the lack 
Of two chairs in a big tall stack.” 

“Won’t you sit here, 

Please, Mamma dear?” 

Marilyn wrote on her mother’s card, and Mardee 
scribbled on Rosemary’s: 

“Sister Rosie, too, 

Here’s a place for you.” 

At half-past twelve the hunters returned with 
a bagful of birds for to-morrow’s breakfast and 
proclaimed themselves hungry enough to eat the 
tablecloth and knives and forks unless something 
else were put upon the table pretty promptly. 

“Look out! I might chew your hand off, too!” 
Tom warned Marilyn fiercely when she held out a 
shelled walnut to appease his appetite. 


98 


MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“It is safer to feed the bears from a distance,’’ 
laughed Mardee, and tossed Mr. Gibson a piece 
of candy from halfway across the room, whereupon 
Cliff set up a horrible growling and made lunges 
in her direction. 

‘ ‘ Give the middle-sized bear something, Marilyn, 
quickl” cried Mardee in mock alarm. 

“ ‘The middle-sized bear!’ ” quoted Tom. 
“Now which of us two is the great big old bear 
and which the teeny-weeny bear? That’s what 
I want to know! ’ ’ 

“Guess!” challenged Mardee. 

“I’ll be the teeny-weeny bear if Mardee will 
have me for her Teddy,” offered Mr. Gibson, and 
Mardee clapped her hands in delight. 

The place cards caused much merriment. 

“I’ll tell you what you might do, Mrs. Gibson,” 
advised Tom, after Cliff had read his card. “You 
just send some of the turkey out before Cliff gets 
a chance at it, so we’ll be sure to have hash to¬ 
morrow. ’ ’ 

“That won’t be necessary,” protested Cliff. 
“If you make Tom sit ‘on the stair’ there will 
certainly be enough left.” 

“See here, there isn’t anything on this young 
lady’s card,” Mr. Gibson complained. Mardee 
sat next to him and he had reached out for her 
place card to read it. 

“You write a verse for me, please, sir,” pleaded 
Mardee. 

Mr. Gibson took his pencil out of his pocket and 
scribbled on her card. Presently he handed it 
back to her. “Miss Mardee Gray” had been the 


99 


A BIRTHDAY DINNER 

only words on it. Under them he had written 
three lines, and the question that met her gaze 
was: 

“Miss Mardee Gray, 

Why wouldn’t you stay 
When you went out to play 
In the yard to-day ? ’ ’ 

“Give me your pencil/’ commanded Mardee. 
She was in a versifying mood by that time and in 
a minute she had inscribed on the other side of the 
card: 

“To stay out and play 
I was perfectly ready, 

Till a cow came that way — 

She was sent by my Teddy.’’ 

“You’re a little minx!” accused Mr. Gibson, his 
eyes twinkling. 

“Now let me try my hand at Marilyn’s,” said 
Cliff. ‘ ‘ She never has got her just deserts yet. ’ ’ 

Marilyn’s name was on her card, too. Cliff 
added to it and read aloud: 

“Marilyn Gibson should make amends 
For the rhymes she wrote about her friends; 

Her mother should give just bread and water 
To such an unregenerate daughter.” 

“Then you could have that much more turkey, 
couldn’t you, Cliff?” suggested Tom sympathet¬ 
ically. ‘ ‘ That’s what made you think of that pun¬ 
ishment, isn’t it?” 

The dinner was in many courses and lasted until 


100 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


late in the day. Afterwards Mrs. Gibson and 
Rosemary took naps, and Mr. Gibson and “the 
youngsters ' ', as he called them, played a game 
of ball to get up an appetite for the cold supper 
of left-overs. But when night came and the whole 
party gathered around the open fire of crackling 
logs, the long day of exercise in the outdoor air 
and the two hearty meals he had eaten began to 
tell upon Mr. Gibson. His face grew flushed and 
rosy and his sleepy eyes would drop shut. More 
than once his head fell forward and he waked with 
a sudden jerk. 

“Will you excuse me now, ladies and gentle¬ 
men?” he said at last, with exaggerated formality. 
“I regret to be obliged to deprive myself of such 
excellent society, but I have an important appoint¬ 
ment at the club. ' ' 

“There isn't any club on Crow's Nest Moun¬ 
tain, is there, Marilyn?” asked Mardee, when their 
host had disappeared up the stairs. 

“No. That is just Dad's foolish way of saying 
good night. He is going to bed.” 

“Let's serenade him,” suggested Mardee. 

“Help! Fire! Murder!” yelled Mr. Gibson's 
voice from the other side of the door when, as soon 
as an orchestra had been organized, Cliff sang 
“Oh, Mama, Pin a Rose on Me”, to an accompani¬ 
ment from the other three. 

“Did you say ‘Encore'?” asked Mardee 
through the keyhole. 

‘ ‘ Bang! ” a shoe hit the door. 

The music began again, but when Cliff had sung 
“A Mother Was Chasing Her Boy Round the 


A BIRTHDAY DINNER 101 

Block’’ and “Oh, Der Liddle Augustine!” the 
choristers decided'they had serenaded long enough 
and went to bed early themselves to he ready for 
the morrow, which would be their last day on 
Crow’s Nest. 

In the morning Mrs. Gibson found them all 
coming in from an early walk in the woods when 
she made her first appearance in the living-room. 

4 ‘ To-day is going to be another day like yester¬ 
day,” she said, when greetings were over. “In¬ 
stead of having the birds cooked for breakfast I 
had the cook make Cliff’s turkey hash, and I 
thought we could have dinner outdoors some¬ 
where and cook the birds over a bonfire.” 

“In the cave under the shoulder of the moun¬ 
tain!” assented Marilyn eagerly. 

None of the others had ever heard of a cave 
under the shoulder of the mountain, though Mar- 
dee had been spending her summers on Crow’s 
Nest ever since she could remember and the hoys 
had hunted all over it for years. 

“It’s a sort of secret cave,” explained Marilyn. 
“We found it by accident. It is in the cliffs over 
the river and the entrance to it is concealed by 
trees. You have to climb down a pretty steep 
slope to get there, hut when you do you find a 
beautiful view of the river bend and the city.” 

The whole house party went out for the picnic 
dinner. They took the birds, cleaned and ready 
for cooking, and a lunch the servants had packed 
in baskets, and set out late in the morning to find 
the cave. By that time the autumn sunshine lay 
mellow and warm on the bright carpet of leaves 


102 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

underfoot, and the placid sky overhead looked as 
blue and as deep as the ocean. The climb down 
the mountain side was steep, as Marilyn had said 
it would be, and by the time they had reached the 
cave they were almost at the foot of the mountain. 
A hundred feet below them a railroad track fol¬ 
lowed the river bank, and two hundred yards or so 
from, the mouth of the cave a mountain torrent 
poured down its rocky bed and emptied itself into 
the river. An occasional glint of the water could 
be seen through the reds and yellows of the foliage, 
and the roar of the churning falls filled the still air 
with music. 

“What a wonderful spot!” exclaimed Mardee, 
drawing a deep breath of rapture. Below them 
the tree tops spread a carpet of gorgeous- hues 
at their feet, and beyond lay the lazy blue river 
and the spires of the city in a smoky haze. 

“What a wonderful place for moonshiners!” 
Tom echoed her tone with a different sentiment. 
“You could pass within a stone’s throw of this 
cave every day of your life and never know it was 
here . 9 9 

“I have never been over to the stream to see 
those waterfalls at close range,” said Mrs. Gib¬ 
son. 

“Come on, then. I’ll go with you. There will 
be time now, and the mountain side will never look 
lovelier than it does to-day,” said her husband. 
“We’ll build the fire and walk over there while it 
is getting hot. ’ ’ 

The boys accompanied them on their tour of 
exploration, but Rosemary complained that she 


A BIRTHDAY DINNER 103 

was tired, and Mardee and Marilyn stayed at the 
mouth of the cave with her. 

“I wish we had not stayed here all alone,’’ said 
Rosemary, when the others had passed out of 
sight through the flaming woods. “Tom has 
made me nervous talking about moonshiners.” 

“We can follow them if you want to,” said Mar- 
dee, but Marilyn uttered a muffled shriek. 

“There is a man on the other side of that un¬ 
derbrush!” she whispered. “I saw him part the 
bushes!’ ’ 

“We should have to go that way to follow the 
others, too,” Rosemary reminded them, looking 
in the direction Marilyn had indicated. 

The three girls sat hugging their knees with 
their eyes glued on the spot where Marilyn had 
seen the man’s face. 

“What could we do if we were attacked!” asked 
Mardee in a low voice. “We haven’t any 
weapons.” 

“I’d scream at the top of my lungs,” declared 
Rosemary in a somewhat steadier tone. Having 
something to think about helped to allay her panic. 

“A lot of good it would do you,’’ derided Mari¬ 
lyn. “With the others on the bank of a roaring 
mountain torrent we might as well be mosquitoes 
buzzing this far away.— I have heard of women 
defending themselves with hatpins. But we 
haven’t even any hatpins.” She glanced despair¬ 
ingly at the soft sport hats pulled down over the 
ears of the other two. 

“There is a butcher knife in that basket,” sug¬ 
gested Mardee hopefully. 


104 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

“And some table knives and forks/’ added 
Rosemary. “Oh, do you suppose they can have 
already taken Mother and Dad and the boys pris¬ 
oners ?’ 9 

They strained their eyes through the trees for 
what seemed an interminable length of time, and 
Rosemary frantically dug down in the baskets 
in search of the knives and forks. 

When, after what was really only a short while, 
the other members of the party returned, they 
found the three girls armed to the teeth and sug¬ 
gesting by their equipment of cutlery cannibalistic 
intentions toward their victims. 

But their white faces and state bordering on 
collapse were not a matter for joking, and Mrs. 
Gibson cried out in alarm: 

“What’s happened? Oh, girls, what is it?” 

“Moonshiners,” murmured Rosemary, weak 
from fright and nervous tension. 

“We saw a man through the underbrush. He 
parted the leaves and looked at us, ’ ’ said Marilyn. 

“Where?” asked Tom. 

“Right there.” Marilyn pointed to the spot. 

“Nonsense, my dear— ” Mr. Gibson was just 
about to declare that she must have been mistaken 
when the underbrush was pushed aside and a man 
holding some dead rabbits by the. heels stepped 
through. 

Rosemary gave a shriek, but Marilyn and Mar- 
dee gasped with relief, and the expressions on the 
boys’ faces changed from alarm and curiosity to 
surprise at the sight of the intruder. 

“Why, Roscoe Lawhead!” exclaimed Mardee. 



They found the three girls armed to the teeth. Page 104 

















































































A BIRTHDAY DINNER 105 

“Where on earth did you come from?” asked 
Tom. 

“What on earth do you mean by hanging around 
here?” demanded Mr. Gibson, putting his arm 
around his older daughter, who was laughing and 
crying hysterically. 

“I hope you will excuse me for giving you such 
a scare,” apologized the intruder. “I saw the 
smoke of your fire up here and came up to see 
what was the matter. When I saw it was- a picnic 
party I turned back to go home but stopped to 
take these rabbits out of my traps and set the 
traps again. Then when I heard the* young lady 
say she had seen me and thought I was a moon¬ 
shiner, I thought I had better show myself so you 
wqjuldn’t he frightened any more. I am awfully 
sorry, sir, ’’ he finished, addressing himself to Mr. 
Gibson. 

‘ ‘ This is. Roscoe Lawhead, the president of our 
class,” Mardee introduced him. 

“I did not realize that you were a friend of the 
young people’s-,” said Mr. Gibson, in apology for 
the tone he had us:ed before. “It’s, all right, you 
see, Rosemary. He didn’t know you had seen him 
at first and was just getting rabbits out of his 
trapa. ’ ’ 

“Do you live near here?” asked Cliff. 

“I live* right down there on the other side of 
the trestle,” Roscoe answered. “The stream 
there goes under the railroad track and flows- into 
the river. Our house faces*the railroad track just 
beyond the creek. ’ ’ 

“I didn’t know you were from Crow’s Nest 


106 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Mountain,” said Tom, and Mardee heard again 
Branch St. John’s v*oice telling her at Miss Rhine- 
beck’s party that his grandfather knew Roscoe’s 
people and that they lived out on Crow’s Nest 
Mountain. 

“Yes, we have always lived here,” Roscoe an¬ 
swered. “My father was a hand at the sawmill 
up the river — worked on the rafts in the spring, 
and kept a fishing boat of his own tied to the bank 
below here.” 

Mrs. Gibson invited him to stay and have dinner 
with them, but he thanked her and declined. Then 
he bade them good-by and departed, as he had 
come, through the thick brush under the trees. 

Rosemary and the other two girls soon got over 
their fright, and Mardee declared that the broiled 
birds were good enough to make them forget all 
the rest of their troubles as well. 

“Roscoe Lawhead will never know how near 
he came to sharing the fate of these quail,” jibed 
Tom. “When I saw you three girls with a 
butcher knife handy and knives and forks all 
ready in your hands I was mighty careful about 
coming too close until I found out whom you were 
waiting for.” 

By that time even Rosemary was laughing, and 
before they had climbed up the mountain again 
she had entirely recovered from the effects of 
her nervousness. 

They had to return early enough for the serv¬ 
ants to shut up the cottage again, and before 
night they departed for the city in the two auto¬ 
mobiles which had brought them. 


CHAPTER IX 


HALLO WE ’EN 

“L m some c,” said Sally Cox mysteriously. It 
was Saturday morning, the last day in October, 
and the other S-B-double-M’s had all dropped in 
at Sally’s. They were usually to be found to¬ 
gether somewhere on Saturdays, and this morn¬ 
ing there was a special reason why Sally could 
not leave home. 

“I know,” Mardee answered her remark with a 
meaning look at the others, who nodded know¬ 
ingly, but refrained from translating the cabalistic 
letters into words. 

“C-a-n-d-y?” ventured Begorry, whereupon a 
certain little person who had been putting some 
dolls to bed in a-corner rose up and faced them like 
Nemesis. 

i i C-a-n-d-y spells candy, ’ ’ said this small person 
pertly. 

“Now, Begorry, you see what you have done!” 
raged Sally. The small person was Sally’s 
younger sister. . 

* 1 Drat .the brat! ’ ’ returned Begorry. 

Sally’s mother had gone down town, leaving 
Sally in charge, of the' younger children, of whom 
there were four. That was the reason Sally 
could' not go* to any of the other girls’ houses. 


108 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

The older girls, having disposed of Sally’s little 
brothers successfully for the time being, had been 
making furtive attempts- for some while to elude 
Bunch, the “brat” Begorry had referred to. But 
Bunch was gifted with an apparently artless but 
deadly persistence in sticking around. 

“Now she’ll give it away and the boys will all 
come piling back in and eat it up as fast as we can 
make it,” Sally went on with her accusation, out 
of the wisdom of experience. The rationality of 
her complaint was supported by the appearance 
at the door of three eager boyish faces. 

“Did Bunch say you were going to make some 
candy?” inquired one of the little brothers. Don¬ 
ald, Douglas, and David Cox came in between 
Sally and Bunch in age. There was a studious, 
bookish one, a merry, prankish one, and a frail 
one with adenoids and protruding teeth confined 
in a brace, but they were all alike in their fond¬ 
ness for candy and their ubiquitousness at candy- 
makings, 

“Bunch said so, but that doesn’t mean that we 
are,” replied Sally in a ton$ of dismissal. 

“Well, we’ll smell it if you do,” chirped Don¬ 
ald, the one with the brace on his teeth, and the 
three retired with a well-pleased air. 

“We c m it a B’s h,” Sally proceeded with her 
mystic discourse. Her gestures, served to make 
her meaning less obscure, but — alas — to the un¬ 
welcome little sister as well as to the others. 

“I’ll tell Mother on you if you go over to Be¬ 
gorry’s,” declared Bunch impishly. “She said 
for you to stay here with us until she got back.” 


HALLOWE’EN 109 

Bunch was a pert and precocious youngster of 
five. Sally shrugged wearily. 

“We might as well give it up,” she sighed. 
4 ‘What shall we do?” 

“Let’s get up a play,” suggested Marilyn. 

‘ ‘ Oh, Marilyn, what a ripping idea! ” “ Oo-ooh, 
let’s do!” “The very thing!” cried all three of 
the others at once. 

“When shall we give it?” asked Begorry. 

“Let’s give it to-night to celebrate Hallow¬ 
e’en,” exclaimed Sally with a burst of inspira¬ 
tion. 

‘ ‘ To-night! How on earth could we learn all the 
parts, or even find a play with just enough char¬ 
acters to go around, by to-night ? ’ ’ demanded Be¬ 
gorry. “It’s ganiuses you must he thinking we 
are. ’ ’ 

“It’ll be easy,” declared Sally calmly. “We 
can make up the play ourselves and put in a char¬ 
acter apiece, and if we get the general idea of what 
the story is and what we ought to say at a given 
place in it, we won’t need to write all the speeches 
out and learn them by heart.” 

Begorry was inclined to be skeptical but as usual 
was guided by Sally, and Sally outlined a story 
which she claimed would “act” splendidly. 

“Prince Reginald Alexander Florizel — or 
something like that, you know — can be in love 
with Lady Georgianna Clarissa Higgenbotham— 
or some such name — but Sir Isaac Abraham 
Jacob Higgenbotham, the Lady Georgianna Cla¬ 
rissa’s father, can oppose their love and try to 
force his daughter to marry the villain, Sir Hugo 


110 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Horatio Hottentot.’ ’ As Sally got warmed up to 
her subject, her language flowed more and more 
smoothly and rapidly. The last long name fairly 
dripped off her tongue. “ There are four parts 
right there, you see. And of course there ought 
to be a minister to marry them, but the villain 
wouldn’t be in at the wedding, so he could put on 
a priest’s robe over his other costume in that 
scene and one of us could take both those parts. 
We could call the minister Simon O’Rola and let 
Begorry take his part and the villain’s— ” 

The other girls interrupted her inspired flow of 
words with a shout of laughter. 

‘ 4 — and there could be a little sister, Lady Tiny 
Pansy Higgenbotham, who could eavesdrop on all 
their conversations and report them to the irate 
father and Sir Hugo Horatio Hottentot,” she con¬ 
tinued undisturbed, with a severe look in her own 
little sister’s direction. ii That part would just 
suit Bunch. I’ll get Mother to let her be in it. 
Bunch, you’ll be wanted, for once.” 

‘ 4 Where can we have it?” asked Begorry. 

“We could have it in our storeroom,” offered, 
Mardee. 

“ That’s just the very place. It’s exactly the 
right shape,” declared Sally. The S-B-double- 
M’s were all familiar with the storeroom at the 
Grays’, having more than once spent the night 
there all together. The Grays ’ home had no third 
story, but a long, low, ceiled room opening out of 
the clothes closet in Mrs. Gray’s bedroom was 
used for storing trunks and unused furniture and 
went by the name of the storeroom. It had one 


HALLOWE’EN 


111 


casement window in the far end and a projecting 
chimney halfway down its length which served 
to cnt it in two parts and provide a corner for 
a stage dressing room. Besides a big, old-fash¬ 
ioned bed with a mended leg, which was furnished 
with springs and a mattress and was wide enough 
to accommodate three people comfortably and had 
more than once held four, it held a collection of old 
washstands, boxes, seatless chairs, broken mirrors, 
and a delectable assortment of rag bags and other 
odds and ends of which a lively imagination could 
make many uses. Mardee and Bab could not re¬ 
member a time when they had not dragged the 
furniture of the storeroom about to make play¬ 
houses or set it all in straight rows to play school. 
It had been in turn studio, hospital, bazaar, Sun¬ 
day school, church, and Pullman car. It had 
known many a spend-the-night party when all its 
old cots were pressed into service. It regularly 
served as a bedroom for Mardee and Bab when 
the arrival of company made of the front room a 
guest chamber. And now that it blossomed forth 
as a possible stage, there was no limit to the stage 
properties suggested by its fascinating contents. 

‘‘But who can we get for an audience on such 
short notice ?” queried Begorry, who was still 
a doubting Thomas. 

“I know!” cried Mardee. “Let’s ask Mother 
to let Bab give a Hallowe’en party to-night. Bab 
can ask a lot of her friends, and they’ll be the audi¬ 
ence. Then we can all have sandwiches and lem¬ 
onade afterwards for refreshments.” 

Mrs. Gray, consulted over the telephone, con- 


112 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

sented to the plan on condition that the girls would 
make the sandwiches and lemonade themselves, 
and went into secret session with Barbara the 
minute she had hung up the receiver. 

The S-B-double-M’s spent a busy afternoon 
composing the play, assigning the parts, printing 
the programs, rehearsing, and arranging the thea¬ 
ter. And quite unknown to them, all of Bab’s 
friends and Mrs. Gray spent a busy afternoon as 
well. 

Mardee and Marilyn arranged the theater while 
Sally printed the programs and Begorry made the 
tickets. The “bald-headed row” was the floor, 
the “parquet” was a semicircle of more or less 
crippled chairs, and the “peanut gallery” con¬ 
sisted of a varied assortment of boxes and wash- 
stands drawn up behind the chairs. Two cots 
placed close to the stage, one on either side of the 
“bald-headed row,” served as boxes. The stage 
itself was made by hanging blankets across the 
end of the narrow room with a row of candles set 
in bottles for the footlights. 

The programs conveyed the information that 
the part of Lady Georgianna Clarissa Higgen- 
botham would be taken by Miss Marilyn Gibson; 
that of Lady Tiny Pansy Higgenbotham, the 
heroine’s little sister, by Miss Bunch Cox; Sir 
Isaac Abraham Jacob Higgenbotham, her irate 
father—“S. Cox”; the Reverend Simon O’Rola 
—“B. Gorham”; Prince Reginald Alexander 
Florizel — “M. Gray”; Sir Hugo Horatio Hot¬ 
tentot, “a most lewd and shameful villain” (a la 
Sally’s “Boys’ King Arthur”)—“Begorry”; 


HALLOWE’EN 


113 


seconds in the duel, lords, ladies, chamberlains, 
and rabble — 4 4 members of the S-B-double-M 
Theatrical Company.” 

The costumes had to be prepared before supper 
time, too, but a search of Mrs. Gray’s old trunks 
and rag bags yielded rich returns. A Persian 
lamb collar made a ferocious looking beard for 
Sir Isaac Abraham Jacob and the muff that 
matched it gave him a most terrifying head of 
hair. 

“Just look at Isaacorski Abrahameski Jacobin- 
ski!” was Mardee’s remark when Sally had got 
them on. 

“Old Ivan the Terrible would suit her better 
for a name;” added Marilyn. 

Lady Tiny Pansy was appealingly infantile in 
an old-fashioned tucked linen chemise and Lady 
Georgianna Clarissa herself was queenly in a pink 
satin relic of the days of trains and leg-o ’-mutton 
sleeves. Marilyn, with her gorgeous hair piled 
high on her head and her complexion made up 
with paint, really did look lovely in the dim radi¬ 
ance cast by the candle footlights. Her perfection 
of feature was not detracted from by the thickness 
and roughness of her skin in a theatrical make¬ 
up, and the girls exclaimed over her beauty as an 
actress. Marilyn was visibly enraptured. Her 
delight in their praises served as an inspiration 
to her natural talents, and her spirited acting in 
the play surprised even the girls who had known 
her longest. 

As soon as supper was over the*performers be¬ 
gan to arrive and disappear through Mrs. Gray’s 


114 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


closet into the storeroom, whence issued muffled 
shouts of laughter and many expeditions in search 
of pins, -pencils, paste, water-color paints, and 
other mysterious supplies. 

At eight o ’clock, the hour named on the tickets 
for the performance to begin, the audience — in¬ 
cluding Seldom Fed, with ears erect and stump of 
a tail aquiver — arrived in a body at the theater 
door, and then the* actors met with a* surprise and 
the purport of Mrs. Gray’s sessions with Bab and 
her friends became evident. 

For every lady in the audience had a gentleman 
escort, and- all were correctly attired in evening 
clothes. It is true that Doctor Gray was the only 
gentleman in the audience who ordinarily wore 
trousers, but gymnasium bloomers and the bor¬ 
rowed plumage of fathers and brothers supplied 
the lack in the wardrobes of the others, and canes 
and stiff collars furnished indisputable evidence 
of their manly estate. The ladies wore evening 
wraps which suspiciously resembled kimonos in 
some cases, and carried bouquets which might 
have trimmed hats in Sally’s ‘ ‘ d d d b r.’ 9 Some 
of them carried opera glasses made of jelly glasses 
or little round vases tied together, and one couple 
came to the theater in a perambulator ‘ 4 limou¬ 
sine” which stood waiting for them at the door. 
Doctor Gray entertained a box party on one of the 
cots, consisting of 6 ‘Miss Lizzie Gray” and her 
chaperone, to make everything perfectly proper. 

The play itself was a bloodcurdling spectacle. 
The villain could scarcely see out from under his 
eyebrows and stalked about fiercely with his arms 


HALLOWE’EN 


115 


folded on his chest and his chin buried in his 
collar, muttering enough “ ’Sdeaths!” and 
‘ ‘ ’Od ’s bodikins!’ 1 to make up for any other de¬ 
ficiencies in his conversation. Handsome Prince 
Florizel gallantly carried a rapier which had once 
done duty as a curtain rod and made the most 
ardent love to Lady Georgianna Clarissa. And 
how the lady reciprocated! But the tale-bearing 
little sister (“true to form,” Sally muttered into 
her beard) reported all their words to the cruel 
tyrant, her father, who insisted upon her marrying 
the villain, and Prince Florizel and Lady Georgi¬ 
anna had many trials to remain faithful through. 

There were two acts, and the only member of 
the audience who was bored was Seldom Fed. He 
lay at his master’s feet with his nose on his paws 
and audibly snored. The others, however, hissed 
the villain and wept with the heroine and ap¬ 
plauded’ Prince Florizel’s defiance, to Sir Isaac 
until the peanut gallery tipped over on the par¬ 
quet and the parquet stepped on the hands of the 
bald-headed row, and the curtain got pushed into 
the footlights with an awful odor of burning wool 
which wrung from “Miss Lizzie Gray” in her box 
a cry of “Oh, my blankets!” and Seldom FeS, 
aroused from his dreams, sprang stiff-legged to 
all four feet and added his furious barking to the 
general commotion. But when the footlights had 
been set back and Seldom Fed had been ignomin- 
iously ejected and the door closed upon him, Lady 
Georgianna Clarissa took up her impassioned 
speech of grief where she had left off when the 
excitement began. 


116 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

In the last act everybody was murdered but the 
father and the Reverend Simon O’Rola, and for 
an encore they all got up and went through a 
double wedding, with the father in the priest’s 
robes this time, the villain making amends for his 
“lewdness and’shamefulness” by taking unto him¬ 
self the little sister for a wife, and Prince Florizel 
and Lady Georgianna Clarissa falling into 
each other ’s arms to the deep content of every 
one. 

After the play the audience crowded around the 
performers to offer felicitations. Bunch was so 
excited by the compliments for Lady Tiny Pansy 
Higgenbotham that she capered about like a 
spring lamb until Sally took her by the hand in 
disgust and led her, protesting, from the store¬ 
room. In Mardee’s bedroom, where her protests 
took the form of sobs, she soon cried herself to 
sleep, and spent the rest of the evening covered up 
on the bed. 

Marilyn was the recipient of the heartiest con¬ 
gratulations. Not only the audience, but her fel¬ 
low-players waxed enthusiastic over her perform¬ 
ance, 

‘ 4 Gibs, you ought to go on the stage,” said Sally. 
They had all flocked to the kitchen to make the 
sandwiches and lemonade, and Sally was standing 
on a chair in the middle of the room, toasting 
marshmallows at the gas jet over her head and 
popping them into the girls’ mouths by turns.— 
“Here’s yours, Begorry.—When we see Marilyn’s 
name flashing out in electric lights across Broad¬ 
way one of these days, we’ll all say, ‘I acted with 


HALLOWE’EN 117 

her in her first play. Ah, them was good old 
days!’ ” 

i1 D d d b r , 9 9 sighed Marilyn lugubriously, wip¬ 
ing a tear out of the corner of her eye, and Sally 
sobbed convulsively as she spitted another marsh¬ 
mallow on the pin. 

“And faith and be jabbers, Gibs, yez do look 
foine with that paint on,” Begorry added her bit 
to the chorus of praise. 

“Yes. It helps my looks to hide my complex¬ 
ion, I know, ’ * replied Marilyn. She was a queer, 
sensitive girl. Perhaps Begorry’s' compliment 
had been tactless, but she had meant well, and 
Marilyn’s tone was so bitter as to embarrass- the 
other girls. 

“Let’s tell some ghost stories,” suggested 
trusty little Bab, sensing the situation and trying 
‘to change the subject. The last sandwich and the 
last marshmallow and the last drop of lemonade 
were just about to« disappear. 

“Yes, let’s!” assented Sally, hopping down off 
her stool. “We must turn off the lights and sit 
oh the floor in the firelight to make them really 
effective. ’ ’ 

“Sally, you know there’s not an open fire in 
the house,” objected Marde’e. 

“Well, we can sit around the stove in the dining¬ 
room, then, in the light from the isinglass doors.” 

“Br-r-r-r-r!” shivered Begorry with chattering 
teeth, when Mardee had put out the light and they 
were left in the very dim radiance from the stove. 
Doctor and Mrs. Gray had gone upstairs and the 
girls had the lower floor to themselves. 


118 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

‘ ‘ Sally, y(\u tell first,’ ’ said Mardee. 

‘‘How many know the story of Old Man 
Grimes f’ 9 asked Sally. 

“I don’t! I don’t!” came from all around the 
circle. 

“Well, then, listen! This is a true story. I 
am g.oing to. harrow up thy soul, freeze thy 
young bloocl, cause thy two eyes like stars 
start from their spheres- and thy knotted and 
combined locks to- part and’ each combined hair 
to stand on* end like quills upon the fretful porcu¬ 
pine!” 

“Just listen to Lune!”* interrupted Begorry 
admiringly. 

“That’s Shakespeare. You never heand of 
him;” replied Sally patronizingly. 

“She had to learn it at school,’’‘explained Mari¬ 
lyn in a hasty aside. She had recovered from her 
ill temper. 

“Well, anyway,” Sally proceeded, “Old Man 
Grimes lived a’bad life — ” 

“A ‘lewd and shameful life’?” one of the 
younger girls quoted from the programmes. 

“Exactly. Just like Sir Hugo Horatio Hotten¬ 
tot, as I laughed and told Begorry. He cussed 
and swore and drank and played cards— ” 

“And rolled bones,” interrupted Marilyn. 

“And whispered in class,” giggled Mardee, 
thereby suggesting a chorus of other crimes: 

“And shuffled his feet in chapel.” 

“And didn’t pay attention.” 

“And didn’t stand straight in line.” 

“And stamped too heavily on the stairs.” 


HALLOWE’EN 119 

“And didn’t respond promptly to the assembly 
bell.” 

“Well, he lived an awful life like that,” re¬ 
sumed Sally, 4 4 and finally he died and was buried. 
One night two of his old cronies were cronying 
around, and one of them said to the other: 

“ 4 1 bet you wouldn’t be game to go out to the 
cemetery and see what Old Man Grimes is doing.’ 

“The other one said he would, and so they 
went out to the cemetery. It was just exactly 
midnight. And they stooped down on the grave 
and called: 

44 4 Old Man Grimes! Old Man Grimes! What 
are you doing down there ?’ 

“And Old Man Grimes answered: 4 Nothing 
at a-a-all! Nothing at a-a-all!’ ” 

Sally’s voice had been hollow as a sepulcher 
in telling the* whole story. She ended on a low, 
shuddering, moan that very nearly did to her 
hearers what she had promised them in the mat¬ 
ter of harrowing up their souls, freezing their 
young blood, and the like*. The pause that fol¬ 
lowed was impressive. 

And just at that moment there was* a long, 
reverberating ring at the doorbell. 

Every girl in the room jumped convulsively. 
Some of them gasped,, some of them caught at 
each other. 

44 Oh, what can it be?” whispered Mardee. 

44 No way to find out without going to the door,” 
remarked practical Bab, in a casual, tone of voice 
that did*much to restore the'sinking Courage of the 
other girls. 


120 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


44 Somebody come with, me,’’ begged Mardee. 

Armed with the gas lighter to turn up the hall 
light, and followed timidly by the whole troop of 
girls, she ventured to- the door and opened it. 

Outside, on the' porch, stood a ghastly visitor. 
The skeleton of a horse, strengthened and propped 
up by a collection of broomsticks, and rusty pokers, 
stood gleaming in the radiance from the open 
door. 

One or two of the girls shrieked, but a bolder 
one said, “Some' of the boys did it,” and sup¬ 
pressed snorts from below the porch steps seemed 
to confirm the suspicion. 

“Let’s put on sheets and. slip down there and 
scare them,” whispered Sally. 

Mardee hastened upstairs and came back with 
half a dozen sheets borrowed from Mrs, Gray’s 
linen closet. 

Sally and Marilyn and Mardee, and Bab and 
two of the younger girls, seized upon the sheets 
and wrapped themselves in them, and when Be- 
gorry begged Sally to let her get in the sheet 
with her, every sheet was made to do double duty 
and an awkward company of ghosts stood ready 
to go down the porch steps. 

“You might as well come out and show your¬ 
selves!” warned Mardee in a threatening voice, 
and they started off on tiptoe. Down the steps 
they went and off the cement walk toward a clump 
of shrubbery on the lawn. They were keeping 
all together, in spite of their bold front. 

Just as they reached the shadowy clump in the 
corner of the lawn six or eight forms shot up 


HALLOWE’EN 121 

from behind the bushes and a chorus of terrifying 
voices shouted: 

“Boo!” 

The ghosts who had come out to spread terror 
all about gave every evidence of being terrified. 
They turned tail and retreated in disorder. In 
some cases one wearer of a sheet fled faster than 
her companion and pulled the ghostly robe oft 
the other girl as she ran. What with racing feet 
and waving arms, every ghost was a flapping 
scarecrow. 

But Seldom Fed, who had heretofore been lying 
quietly on his rug in the back hall, became af¬ 
fected by the contagion of excitement and was 
aroused to defend his household. He rushed out 
of the door and to the center of the lawn, where 
he stood with all four feet braced wide apart, 
barking furiously at the shrubbery. Once or twice 
he made such alarming dashes in the direction 
whence issued certain muffled sounds that the 
stealthy visitors were obliged to come out in 
the open and hold friendly converse with Seldom 
for their own safety. 

“Nice old Seldom!” said some one. “You 
wouldn’t hurt me, would you, Seldom?” 

“That’s Don!” gloated Mardee. “I thought 
he was out there! ’ ’ 

“And there’s Branch St. John,” announced 
Marilyn. 

“And Ed McKie,” said Begorry. 

It turned out to be a crowd of Freshman boys, 
and upon the girls’ invitation they came inside 
and joined the circle around the dining-room stove. 


122 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“Where on earth did you boys get that awful 
thing V’ demanded Sally, indicating the direction 
of the skeleton horse. 

“From the city dumping ground,’’ the boys 
confessed. 

They stayed until the arrival of the fathers and 
mothers for their daughters broke up the Hal¬ 
lowe’en party, and in the morning they returned 
to cart away the bones of the skeleton horse. 


CHAPTER X 


A SECEET AND A QUAEKEL 

On Sunday afternoon Don Willis vaulted the 
two intervening porch railings and made his ap¬ 
pearance in the Grays’ parlor. 

Sunday was a popular calling day in Channings- 
burg, and Mardee and Bab between them usually 
had a houseful of callers. 

“I can’t come into my own home on Sunday 
without having a dozen youngsters underfoot,” 
Doctor Gray complained. Heretofore it had been 
mainly the younger boys of the girls’ own ages 
who had come in bunches, shuffling with small-boy 
awkwardness, swinging their arms and legs, and 
indulging in boisterous pranks at each other’s ex¬ 
pense. But this year Mardee had begun to con¬ 
sider herself a young lady. Since Tom Adair and 
Cliff Nash had become her good friends, more and 
more of the older boys in the high school had be¬ 
gun calling on her. Some of the younger ones 
were frightened away by the presence of the big 
fellows, but there was still Bab for them to come 
to see, and some, like Don Willis, were not so 
easily put out of countenance. 

On the Sunday after Hallowe’en Tom Adair 
and Cliff Nash were already ensconced in two of 


124 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

the parlor chairs with Mardee hemmed up in a 
corner before them when Don came in. 

‘ 4 Ho there, Kid! You can ’t come in, ’’ was their 
cordial reception of the newcomer. 

*‘ Who says so V 9 inquired Don, with the boldness 
of an old and familiar friend. 

“We blackballed you,” announced Tom cheer¬ 
fully. 

“I bet Mardee voted for me, anyway. Didn’t 
you, Mardee?” 

“Mardee can’t vote. She is president of this 
club and hasn’t a vote,” declared Cliff. A course 
in Civil Government and the class elections had 
given the pupils of the high school a fair knowl¬ 
edge of parliamentary law. 

“Well, I propose my name again,” said Don. 

“I blackball it.” 

‘ 1 1 blackball it. ’ ’ 

Thus both the others in one breath. 

“Try it once more,” pleaded Don. 

But they both blackballed it as promptly as be¬ 
fore. 

“I’ll tell you what I can do for you, Don,” cried 
Mardee, seized with a happy inspiration. “I’ll 
propose the names of Bab and Davy, and when 
they are members they will both vote for you and 
that will make a tie and I’ll have to cast my 
vote!’ ’ 

Bab and Davy Wright, a boy of her own age, 
were popping corn in the grate across the room. 

“We’ll have to vote on them first,” Tom re¬ 
minded her darkly, and when Mardee proposed 
their names with much ceremony, Bab was 


A SECRET AND A QUARREL 125 

elected to membership but Davy was blackballed. 

4 ‘Davy, you and I will form a rival club,” said 
Don, “and try to amalgamate.” 

But although there was no opposition from Tom 
and Clift to the amalgamation, poor Don was no 
sooner a member than he discovered the reason 
for their complaisance. 

“I move that we expel Don for incompatibility,” 
said Clift. 

“Second the motion,” said Tom. 

“We have to vote on it,” urged Mardee. 

The vote was a tie and the weight of Mardee’s 
presidential ballot gave Don a majority that 
kept him in the club. His first act as a member 
was to move that Messrs. Adair and Nash go 
home, but Tom promptly moved that his motion 
be laid on the table. Finally, after the motion 
had been tabled twice and carried twice, Tom and 
Cliff departed, vowing that if they could not keep 
undesirables out of the club they would resign, and 
Mardee and Don proceeded to help Davy and 
Bab eat up the popcorn. 

Sunday afternoons were a subject for confiden¬ 
tial comparisons among the girls at school on 
Mondays. 

“How many callers did you have?” they asked 
each other. Of late Mardee’s total had been 
breaking all records and the other S-B-double-M’s 
pretended to be crushed with envy. 

As a matter of fact, Marilyn Gibson was the 
only one who really cared. But Marilyn's dispo¬ 
sition was peculiar. She had allowed that mis¬ 
fortune of a rough and coarsened skin to embitter 


126 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

her whole nature. It really was a sad affliction 
for a young girl to bear, for people could not help 
noticing so glaring a defect, and with her lovely 
hair and good features and build she narrowly 
missed being a beauty. Marilyn raged impotently 
and made no effort to control a growing cynicism 
and jealousy of the other girls,— and especially of 
Mardee, since Mardee was the prettiest of her 
close friends. It was Marilyn’s own fault that 
she was not popular. If she had only been able 
to see that in Sally’s case not even actual homeli¬ 
ness prevented her from being one of the best- 
liked girls in their set she might have been less 
self-conscious and sensitive. Instead, she was 
convinced that it was Mardee’s growing comeli¬ 
ness rather than her sweet and unaffected cordial¬ 
ity that made friends for her so easily, and in 
consequence she held a secret grudge against her 
so deep down in her heart as to be half unsus¬ 
pected by herself. 

“How many, Mardee?” she asked as they came 
out of school together Monday afternoon. 

Mardee understood that she meant ‘ ‘ How many 
callers yesterday?” for Marilyn took a perverse 
satisfaction in the evidences of her friend’s su¬ 
periority in the line of her own ambitions. 

“Not many. Business was sort of dull yester¬ 
day,” laughed Mardee, from a kind instinct not to 
outshine as a rival. “Oh, Marilyn,” she added, 
from the same kind impulse, “you did look so 
sweet in the play Saturday night. Really you 
have talent as an actress.” 

“And before the footlights my complexion 


A SECRET AND A QUARREL 127 

doesn’t make so much difference,” said Marilyn, 
with the same bitterness of tone she had used in 
speaking to Begorry the night of the play. “I 
can put on enough paint and powder to hide it.’ 9 

“Oh, Marilyn, please don’t take it that way,” 
begged Mardee. “You ought not to imagine your¬ 
self so homely.” 

“I don’t,” laughed Marilyn frankly, with the 
note of hard cynicism that kept her friends at a 
distance. “It is only my skin that is ugly, but 
that is the first thing people see when they look 
me in the face. Honestly, Mardee, I might be 
pretty if it were not for that.” 

“You are pretty, Marilyn,” insisted Mardee, 
pitying the pain that could make any one speak 
so ungirlishly. 

“No, I am not,” replied Marilyn with pitiless 
honesty. “But I do take a pretty photograph.— 
I’ll tell you a secret if you’ll cross your heart 
you ’ll never breathe it to a living soul. ’ ’ The two 
girls were walking together. There were groups 
before and behind them, but no one within hearing 
distance. 

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” promised 
Mardee in the glib formula always used. 

“I am going to be a moving-picture actress.” 

“You could do that splendidly, Gibs!” cried 
Mardee with enthusiasm. 

“I know I could act if I tried, and on the screen 
my complexion would make less difference than 
anywhere else.” 

“Will you go to a dramatic school when you 
finish the high school?” asked Mardee. 


128 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“I am going to try to break into tbe movies right 
away. That’s the secret. You promise you won’t 
tell?” 

Mardee repeated her formula. 

“Well, Franklin S. Foote” — the name of a 
noted moving-picture producer — “is conducting 
a beauty contest in the newspapers all over the 
country. He will make the prize winner a star, 
and the girls in this region can send their photo¬ 
graphs to The Channingsburg Times. I am going 
to send mine in, and if it is selected by the judges, 
I will leave school right away and go to California. 
You know youth counts for a great deal on the 
stage and I’d want to begin right away to have as 
long a career as possible.— And, oh, Mardee, just 
think of the fortune I should make and the 
millions of people who could see my good points 
without ever knowing what a fright I really 
am!” 

Mardee was at a loss for an answer. Her good 
sense told her that it would be a foolish thing for 
Marilyn to leave school, even if she could win in a 
nation-wide beauty contest, and she was amazed 
at her friend’s assurance that she would be se¬ 
lected by the great producer. Also, she knew 
what Mrs. Gibson’s feeling w^ould be about her lit¬ 
tle girl’s sending her photograph to strangers for 
possible publication. Marilyn noticed her hesita¬ 
tion and jumped to the uncharitable conclusion 
that Mardee meant to enter the beauty contest, 
too. 

“I suppose you’ll try for it, too?” she said 
suspiciously. 


A SECRET AND A QUARREL 129 

“Why, Marilyn Gibson, I wouldn’t do such a 
thing for anything!” protested Mardee. 

“What’s wrong with doing such a thing, I’d 
like to know?” inquired Marilyn pointedly, as if 
bent upon putting an unfriendly interpretation 
upon any words Mardee might say. 

“I meant I wouldn’t enter any contest in the 
hope of beating you,” explained Mardee, deter¬ 
mined to be friends. 

“Well, why don’t you act like you want me to 
beat, then?” 

Again Mardee felt embarrassed. 

“Say what you think,” the wise little inner 
counselor that will guide any one who will let it 
whispered into her ear. 

“Well — just to be frank, Marilyn, I don’t be¬ 
lieve your mother would let you send your photo¬ 
graph to the Times if she knew about it. Nor 
your father, either.” 

“Of course Mother wouldn’t. Dad always lets 
me do anything I want to. But I sha’n’t ask 
either one of them, though, ’ ’ Marilyn replied, with 
the light cynical laugh that Mardee always found 
so unpleasant. 

“They wouldn’t let you leave school if you won 
the contest, either, would they?” continued Mar¬ 
dee, doubtfully. 

“Don’t suppose Mother would. And she’s 
boss,” answered Marilyn, with the same assump¬ 
tion of airiness. “But I guess my life is my own 
to live, and she would be glad enough to have me 
a famous artist.” 

There was another long pause. 


130 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


4 ‘ Well, is that all the interest yon can take in 
your friends’ ambitions, Mardee?” asked Marilyn 
at last. 

“Oh, Marilyn, I’m so sorry! And I hate to 
seem goody goody, but if I were you I wouldn’t 
do anything without telling my mother. I have 
always told Mother everything — she is so much 
wiser than I.” 

Marilyn was plainly offended and Mardee was 
much troubled in her mind when they parted at 
the corner where Mardee had to turn off on her 
way home. Her first thought was to carry the 
trouble to her mother, and she sought her out the 
minute she got into the house. 

Mrs. Gray was in the back yard, helping Lighty 
to take down the clothes the laundress had left 
hanging on the line to dry, and Mardee went out 
to lend a hand and pour the whole story into her 
ears. It was literally true, as she had told Mari¬ 
lyn, that she “always told Mother everything,” 
and she had no thought of giving away a confi¬ 
dence when she shared it with her mother. 
Mother had always helped her to keep the girls’ 
secrets. 

“Her mother certainly ought to know of it,” 
said Mrs. Gray, with her mouth full of clothespins. 
‘ ‘ If girls would always talk things over with their 
mothers,” she went on, taking the clothespins out 
of her mouth and dropping them into her apron 
pocket, “they would save themselves from so 
many mistakes and from so much that puts them 
in a false light. As for you, I don’t see that you 
said anything that need have hurt her feelings, 


A SECRET AND A QUARREL 131 

and I am sure that if you continue to be friendly 
the trouble between you will soon blow over.’ ’ 

Meanwhile Marilyn wrapped up her photograph 
and took it to the post office to stamp and mail. 
The lady who sold her the stamps was a Miss 
Daisy Long who had been a schoolmate of Mari¬ 
lyn’s mother in the days when Channingsburg was 
a village. In spite of the difference in their 
present stations the two still called each other by 
their first names and felt a friendly interest in 
each other’s intimate affairs. She noticed the ad¬ 
dress on Marilyn’s package and putting two and 
two together guessed what was in it. 

But instead of saying anything to Marilyn she 
telephoned to her old friend that night and asked 
her if she were going to let her daughter com¬ 
pete in the Times -Foote beauty contest. 

“Why, certainly not,” answered Mrs. Gibson. 
“I can answer without knowing which daughter 
you mean. But did you have Rosemary or Mari¬ 
lyn in mind?” 

“Marilyn,” answered Miss Long. 

“The idea! What could have put such a thing 
into your head, Daisy? The child is so unformed 
and angular yet that she could not stand a chance 
of winning, and the thing would naturally be dis¬ 
tasteful to me, anyway. I wouldn’t permit either 
one of them to submit her photograph in a public 
contest.” 

“Well, I didn’t think so, Mamie.” 

“What made you ask, then?” inquired Mrs. 
Gibson, puzzled. 

“I think Marilyn mailed her picture to the 


132 MARDEE GRAY'S CHOICE 


Times to-day, and I thought you would want to 
know — with the chances of its being published, 
and all. But don’t tell her I told you. She 
wouldn’t understand, and I don’t want to get into 
her bad graces.” 

“Marilyn, is it true that you sent your photo¬ 
graph to the Times in this Franklin S. Foote con¬ 
test?” asked Mrs. Gibson, none too tactfully, the 
minute she left the telephone. 

“Was that Mrs. Gray telephoning you?” asked 
Marilyn, jumping at another sudden conclusion. 

“Never mind who it was. She asked me not to 
say—” began Mrs. Gibson. 

“Then I know it was. And I know why she 
didn’t want you to tell me who it was,” stormed 
Marilyn, her face dark with anger. 

She could hardly wait for Tuesday morning to 
accuse Mardee of not keeping her secret. She 
went to school early and awaited Mardee’s ar¬ 
rival. Mardee came in with Sally and Begorry. 

“Mardee, may I speak to you alone?” asked 
Marilyn. 

“No secrets allowed in the S-B-double-M’s,” 
sang out Sally good-naturedly, but a glance at 
Marilyn’s angry face was enough to inform her 
that there had been some quarrel between her 
and Mardee. 

“Bid you tell anybody that I was going to send 
in my photograph to the Times -Foote beauty con¬ 
test?” Marilyn demanded, when she and Mardee 
had started around the walk to the back yard. 

“No—” began Mardee, and then the thought 
of Mrs. Gray saying, “Her mother certainly 


A SECRET AND A QUARREL 133 

ought to know of it” with her mouth full of 
clothespins suddenly silenced her. “That is, no¬ 
body but Mother, and I don’t think she would 
have repeated it. She never does.” 

“You promised me, and you crossed your 
heart and hoped to die, that you wouldn’t tell 
anybody what I told you, and then you went 
straight and told your mother—” 

“But I always tell Mother everything! I told 
you that yesterday. When I promise to keep a 
secret I don’t mean I will have secrets from her. 
But she would be just as careful of your confi¬ 
dence as I.” 

“Just as careful as you!” quoted Marilyn de¬ 
risively. “She was. She telephoned my mother 
all about it last night.” 

“She did not!” stormed Mardee. 

“She certainly did. Who else could have done 
it! I didn’t tell a soul but you.” 

“I’d be willing to swear she didn’t,” insisted 
Mardee. 

“Well, that isn’t the question, anyhow,” an¬ 
swered Marilyn. “The real question is whether 
you told or not, and you did. I’ll never trust you 
again as long as I live.” 


CHAPTER XI 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, AND A BAND 

Mardee went home after school in tears, hut 
she was comforted by her mother and father. 

4 ‘The untrustworthy girl is usually the one 
who does not confide in her mother,’ 9 pronounced 
Doctor Gray, and when Mardee had learned be¬ 
yond a doubt that it was not Mrs. Gray who had 
telephoned to Marilyn’s mother, she felt better. 

The other S-B-double-M’s did not take sides 
with either one, for neither Marilyn nor Mardee 
was willing to tell what the trouble was. Sensi¬ 
tive Marilyn did not wish to have her moving- 
picture project generally known, and Mardee 
could not make any explanations without doing 
what Marilyn had accused her of,— violating a 
confidence. The four were together just as much 
as usual, but the feeling of coolness caused a con¬ 
straint that every one was conscious of. 

Marilyn seemed determined to put Mardee at 
a disadvantage and to put the worst interpreta¬ 
tion on any of Mardee’s acts that could possibly 
be taken as a slight. 

In November Mardee’s Uncle Theodore, her 
mother’s brother, who had a farm in Ohio and 
spent a part of each year in Florida, passed 
through Channingsburg on his way to his winter 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, BAND 135 

home. Uncle Theodore's visits were always oc¬ 
casions to be looked forward to. In the first 
place, he had a daughter Judie who was Mardee's 
age; in the second place, he came in a mammoth 
touring car which was the last word in automo¬ 
bile luxury and was very generous with rides 
during his stay in Channingsburg; in the third 
place Aunt Harriet, his wife, was a sort of female 
Santa Claus, whose baggage was as full of pres¬ 
ents as the good old Christmas saint's pack; and 
besides all that, Uncle Theodore had a delectable 
way of stopping his twelve-cylinder leviathan in 
front of the stores downtown to ask his nieces, 
“Is there anything you want in here?" and sup¬ 
plying imaginary wants if they did not mention 
something definite. 

This year Uncle Theodore wanted to go out 
to see the army post a few miles from Channings¬ 
burg but Aunt Harriet felt too tired after their 
long trip to take the ride. 

“Harriet and I will stay at home," said Mrs. 
Gray, “and Ned and the children can go with 
Theodore.'' 

“There will be room in the car for three more. 
Mardee, haven't you some little friends who 
would enjoy the ride out to the post?" Uncle 
Theodore asked of Mardee, who happened to be 
at hand. 

A word to the wise was sufficient. Away flew 
Mardee to the telephone and called up all three 
of the other S-B-double-M's. Sally and Begorry 
eagerly accepted, but she could not get any an¬ 
swer over Marilyn's 'phone. 


136 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Later, when Marilyn learned of the visit to the 
post and that she was the only S-B-double-M who 
had not gone, she assumed an injured air. Mar- 
dee tried to explain that she had had only a few 
minutes ’ notice and that no one answered the 
telephone at Marilyn’s home. 

“The servants must be getting very careless. 
When I tell Mother she will certainly raise Cain 
with them,” Marilyn replied, but her manner 
plainly showed that she did not think Mardee had 
done her best to reach her. 

That was just an example of her attitude in 
many small matters. Mardee’s feeling that 
Marilyn sought to place her at a disadvantage 
received frequent confirmation. She was uncom¬ 
fortably aware that Marilyn never failed to 
ascribe to her words a meaning that made them 
seem less friendly or less sincere than they were 
intended to be, if she could. Mardee, who was 
peace-loving by nature, instinctively ignored her 
barbed shafts and never replied in kind, but natu¬ 
rally she did not seek Marilyn’s society and the 
good times with Cliff and Tom as well as with the 
S-B-double-M’s were interfered with. 

It was well for Mardee Ant that they were. 
Mardee, in Tom’s society, was always inclined to 
be Mardee Grasshopper. It was the Grasshopper 
characteristics that he admired most in her, and 
most appealed to. Her pretty face, her love of 
fun, her delight in frivolous nonsense,— those 
were the things that Tom found attractive. And 
his chivalrous homage, his ready appreciation of 
pretty clothes, and buoyant good comradeship 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, BAND 137 

were at the bottom of Mardee’s liking for him. 
When she and Tom and Cliff and Marilyn were 
together a great deal of the time, studying 
seemed a dull business and the routine of classes 
and everyday occupations humdrum and boring. 

But in the revulsion of feeling her quarrel with 
Marilyn brought about, Mardee stopped and took 
stock of herself. She perceived that Mardee 
Grasshopper, ever since the Lakemont game, had 
had the upper hand over Mardee Ant. She saw 
that she had been less thorough in her work than 
before then, and that unless she went hack over 
the lessons and studied them more systematically 
she could not get grades high enough to make 
her eligible for the Davis medal. 

The reports issued at the end of each month 
showed that Mardee had a good chance to win 
the medal if she kept on as she had begun. A 
number of Freshmen out of different city gram¬ 
mar schools were possible candidates for the 
honor. Sally Cox had excellent grades and re¬ 
ferred to herself as “the company” in “Geniuses 
and Co.” But Mardee’s most formidable rivals 
were Branch St. John and Roscoe Lawhead. At 
the end of each month a comparison of report 
cards showed that those three averages — Mar- 
dee’s, Branch’s, and Roscoe’s — remained about 
the same. If Mardee beat Branch in English, 
then Branch would beat Mardee in Geometry and 
Roscoe’s mark in Physics would be higher than 
either of the others, though not so high, perhaps, 
in Latin. The grades of the three were a seesaw 
which preserved upon the whole an even balance. 


138 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


During the weeks immediately after the Lake- 
mont game — the giddy, gay weeks of Marilyn’s 
houseparty and Hallowe’en — other things had 
crowded the Davis medal out of Mardee’s mind. 
Mardee Grasshopper had been dancing in the sun¬ 
shine of fun and frolic. But after the trouble 
with Marilyn a serious, stubborn little Mardee 
Ant set to work storing up knowledge for the 
coming examinations. 

“Mardee Grasshopper gets me into all the 
trouble I ever get into,” Mardee confessed dur¬ 
ing the stock-taking that preceded Mardee Ant’s 
activities. “If I had been pegging away at this 
Latin and Geometry I should have been so much 
more interested in them that I shouldn’t have 
cared so much about Marilyn’s snippishness — or 
at any rate I should have had something I could 
turn to for comfort. As it is, I feel that they are 
strangers to me and I have to make friends of 
them.” 

Fortunately Uncle Theodore’s visit came just 
at the right time to lighten the gloom into which 
remorse and desperate resolve had plunged con¬ 
scientious Mardee Ant. 

Uncle Theodore’s visits were always larks for 
Mardee and Bab. There were only two bedrooms 
in the Grays’ little home and when guests came 
the two girls had to move their possessions into 
the storeroom and convert the front bedroom 
into a guest chamber. For any one else they were 
inclined to go grumblingly. The long, low, 
ceiled room was icy cold in winter without any 
fireplace and smothering hot in summer with its 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, BAND 139 

one square casement window tucked under the 
sun-warmed roof. Many a time had they com¬ 
plained that the bare boards of the storeroom 
floor gave them chilblains in winter and burned 
their toes on Tuesday nights in summer, after a 
long day of ironing in the sweltering kitchen be¬ 
low,— but only when the guests for whom they 
had given up their own room were less welcome 
than Uncle Theodore and his family. Very 
cheerfully they moved for them. And Judie al¬ 
ways went with them and seemed to consider 
sleeping on one of the cots in the storeroom, or, 
better still, sandwiched in between her two cous¬ 
ins in the wide old crippled bed, more fun than 
anything else she did on her yearly Florida trip. 
Usually all three slept curled up together under 
the quaint old quilts which belonged on the store¬ 
room bed. 

Judie was small, dark-eyed, sharp of feature, 
and pert in manner, a strong contrast to her two 
round-faced cousins. But she was full of a nerv¬ 
ous staccato animation and always eager for a 
good time, and her shrill delight in everything 
that offered made her visits an exciting round of 
pleasure. This fall Uncle Theodore’s arrival co¬ 
incided with one of the biggest basketball games 
of the high school season. 

“I hadn’t intended to go,” Mardee confessed 
to her cousin. “I am studying awfully hard for 
some tests next week and had declined two invita¬ 
tions. But with you here to go, too, I sha’n’t be 
able to resist. I think I’ll holler to Don to let us 
three girls go down with him. I know the other 


140 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


boys who asked me to go will understand. ’ ’ 

Don, duly “hollered’’ to, was most cordial. 

“Sure thing! Come along. Ain’t I the lucky 
dog?” he replied in his very worst English before 
the company. “Haven’t any more cousins for 
me to take, have you?” he inquired when he ap¬ 
peared at the door to escort them. 

“Do you like the sample?” asked Judie, mak¬ 
ing a saucy face at him. 

“Fine!” he answered. 

The high school basketball team was to play 
the Channingsburg Athletic Club team on their 
own gymnasium floor in the Armory. There 
were several basketball organizations in the city 
and the school team had a full schedule, but this 
C. A. C. team was its most formidable rival. It 
was made up of young clerks and business boys 
who were in the average older and heavier than 
the high school boys. The C. H. S. team had, 
however, come out victorious in one encounter 
between the two on the court in the high school 
gymnasium. 

“But we feel less confident of our ability to 
beat them on their own floor,” Don explained, on 
the way down to the Armory. 

“I’ll help root with all my might, if you think 
that will do any good,” offered Judie in staccato 
fashion,— not noisy, but nevertheless shrill. 

“Be sure you do — of course it will,” Don 
said, laughing. 

At the door of the Armory they met the high 
school band just arriving in a body. 

“Boys, this is my cousin Judie. She’s going 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, BAND 141 

to root for us to-night,” Mardee said in playful 
introduction. 

“Hurrah for Cousin Judie! Boys, let’s give 
her a serenade!” Ed McKie acknowledged the 
formality as spokesman for the entire aggrega¬ 
tion. 

“Oh, do!” cried Mardee eagerly. “Play 
‘Funiculi Funicula’ for her. You do that 
splendidly. ’’ 

“Come on, boys! My drum is upstairs but this 
will do, I reckon,” and Ed jerked a stick off the 
side of a wooden crate on the curbstone and beat 
on an iron mailbox. Don and the girls shuffled 
their feet in time to the music, and what with that 
and with Ed’s enthusiastic if unmusical accom¬ 
paniment on the mail box they had soon collected 
a crowd around them that looked like a Salvation 
Army meeting. 

“Now! Nine ’rahs for the high school!” pro¬ 
posed Mardee, when “Funiculi Funicula” was 
finished, and with a rousing cheer the meeting 
broke up. 

“What a spooky old place this is,” said Judie, 
shivering, as they started up the stairs. Two 
flights of narrow dirty stairs led up through bare 
and dimly lighted corridors painted a dismal cold 
gray and further darkened with innumerable cob¬ 
webs and flyspecks. The assembly hall which the 
C. A. C. used as a court was on the top floor. 

The Armory was in fact a “spooky” old place. 
The building was almost as old as Channings- 
burg itself. Situated near the river, in the oldest 
part of the town, it had stood there since the 


142 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


town was little more than an Indian trading post 
and had no means of communicating with the 
outer world save by water. It had probably been 
intended for a warehouse in the first place, but 
in different periods of the city’s history had 
served as church, auditorium, playhouse, jail, 
military headquarters during the Civil War, and 
now armory for the state militia. Additions had 
been made at random to fit it for its various roles 
and the result was a curious architectural hodge¬ 
podge with floors on different levels, walls of 
varying thicknesses, and gables of divers pat¬ 
terns. 

“ * Spooky’ is the right word,” agreed Don. 
“Did you know, Mardee, that twenty years or so 
ago, when they were tearing down a part of this 
building for repairs, they found a double wall 
with a skeleton in between?” 

‘ ‘ Mercy, no! Could they tell how it got there ? ’ ’ 
asked Mardee, while Judie hugged herself and 
uttered little shrieks of pretended terror. 

“No. Nobody knew anything about it, and 
there wasn’t any way to find out so long after¬ 
ward. He had on a Yankee uniform and must 
have been there since the war between the 
States.” 

Don’s grandfather had fought in the Confed¬ 
erate army, and no real Southerner will speak of 
the war with the Northern States as a “civil 
war. ’ ’ 

“But a double wall! How funny,” persisted 
Mardee. 

Don continued, “There are a lot of funny 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, BAND 143 

things about this old shack. It doesn’t follow 
any plan and I don’t suppose there is anybody 
that could find his way all over it.” 

“Oh, please let’s explore it,” shrilled Judie, 
always eager for a new sensation. 

Bab added a hearty second to her plea and 
Mardee gave a trembling consent. With Don in 
the lead and Judie close at his heels, the four went 
from floor to floor, trying doors and finding them 
locked or poking their heads into dark empty 
rooms, some of them spectrally lighted by skele¬ 
ton windowpanes outlined against the dim radi¬ 
ance from the street, others without even this 
illumination and so dark that they literally could 
not see their hands before their faces when they 
tried. They followed narrow cross passages lead¬ 
ing to more dirty lamp-lighted halls and stair¬ 
ways; they heard men’s voices beyond some 
doors and refrained from opening them, and 
three times they descended by different stairs to 
the street. One of these street entrances was 
near an alley. 

“I’ll dare anybody to go up that dark alley,” 
said Judie. They had been daring each other to 
go into the dim rooms and allow the door to be 
shut from the outside, and no one had been bold 
enough to take the dare. Even stout-hearted Bab 
had succumbed to Judie’s trumped-up terror. 

“Pshaw! I’ll do that,” declared Don and Bab 
in one breath. “I’ll be game to go if you’ll all 
go with me,” said Mardee. 

Hand in hand they felt their way along the 
alley wall. 


144 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“Here’s a door,” announced Judie in a sepul¬ 
chral voice intended to raise goose flesh on the 
others. 

‘ 4 Dare you to open it,” said Bab, who was re¬ 
covering her normal matter-of-factness. 

Judie turned the knob and drew the others in 
after her. They could feel some more stairs — 
narrow ones, between two brick walls — and hud¬ 
dling together, they mounted them. At the top 
they came face to face with another door in the 
dark. They could feel the knob. 

Judie asked, “Who’s game to open this?” 

Bab put her hand on the knob. 

“Look out! I bet that skeleton’s right on the 
other side,” Don whispered in a hoarse note of 
warning. Bab’s newly recovered courage de¬ 
serted her. Don himself was affected by the 
panic he had aroused in the others. All four 
tumbled pell-mell down the stairs and through 
the alley and out into the street once more. Not 
until they found themselves in the bright lights 
of the C. A. C. club rooms, where the basketball 
game was beginning, did their breath come natu¬ 
rally again. 

Then they looked at one another and laughed, 
sheepish but relieved. 

“Want to explore any more, Judie?” Don 
asked. 

“No — thanks!” exploded Judie very posi¬ 
tively. 

But whatever the oddities of the building, it 
boasted the best dancing floor in town in the long 
room on the top story. It was large enough, too, 


BOOKS, BASKETBALL, BAND 145 

to accommodate a great many people. There was 
a large crowd gathered about the basketball 
court, but after the game — which, by the way, 
ended in a defeat for the high school boys, who 
promptly rechallenged their rivals — when the 
gathering was turned into a dance there was 
plenty of space for the dancers, in spite of the 
chairs of those not dancing. 

Tom Adair had spied Mardee early in the 
evening. He and Cliff were both on the team and 
Mardee yelled herself hoarse in cheering them, 
egged on by Judie’s excited efforts. As soon as 
the game was over she explained to Tom how she 
happened to be there — for Tom was one of the 
two who had asked her to come and been refused 
— and introduced Judie to him. He asked Mar¬ 
dee for the first dance and made an engagement 
for the second with Judie, who was to dance the 
first with Don. 

“I wish our high school gym were as large as 
this, don’t you?” Mardee asked Tom, as they 
glided around the big room without colliding 
with any one in spite of the number of couples on 
the floor. 

Tom answered, “I was just thinking of that. 
We will have to rent this room for our own big 
affairs in the spring.” 

Mardee told him of the ghostly tour of explora¬ 
tion and they had a hearty laugh together over it. 

“And now how about to-morrow night?” asked 
Tom. “Hasn’t getting out to-night broken the 
spell? Won’t you be ready for a little more 
fun?” 


146 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


But Mardee shook her head. Judie would be 
leaving to-morrow. And Mardee Ant stuck to 
her guns, pegging away at Latin and geometry 
and physics and English and history until she 
had caught up and was able to pass the monthly 
tests with flying colors. 


CHAPTER XII 


OF A NUMBER OF THINGS 

Thanksgiving followed the November tests, 
and after Thanksgiving Christmas came on with 
a rush. It seemed to Mardee that it was still a 
long way off when December began, but the weeks 
were so filled with school work and Christmas 
preparations that the calendar seemed fairly to 
melt away toward the twenty-fifth. 

In the first place, there were the Christmas ex¬ 
aminations staring her in the face. Of course, 
after the work she had done getting ready for the 
set of tests, they did not hold the terrors they 
might have, but beside the term examinations the 
monthly tests paled into insignificance. She was 
glad that Mardee Ant had been jolted into action 
before it was too late, and she resolved not to let 
her flag in the good work before the Davis medal 
was safely in hand. 

And then there were Christmas presents to 
make. Mardee ’s Christmas list was always en¬ 
tirely too long to consider buying the presents 
ready-made and she spent her afternoons con¬ 
cocting dainty trifles for her family and friends. 
She did not like to sew, though she had to do 
more or less of it, since her mother clung to the 
good old-fashioned notion that a girl ought to 


148 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

have to make her own clothes. But she was 
clever with pencil and paints, and for Christmas 
always managed to manufacture something orig¬ 
inal that i ‘had a touch of Mardee” about it. For 
Aunt Harriet she painted a set of place cards, for 
Rosemary Gibson a dozen score cards, for some 
of the schoolgirls decorated flower pots, and for 
others fancy boxes to fill with fudge. But it all 
took time and assisted in that rapid melting 
away of the calendar. 

“You making that for me, Mard?” inquired 
Sally one afternoon, watching Mardee at work on 
a paper poinsettia for a candy box. Sally and 
Begorry and Marilyn had put their heads in at 
the front door to call for Mardee without ringing 
the bell and been bidden back to the dining room 
where Mardee was at work in the bay window. 

“Yes, I’ll trim a hat with it for you, if I can 
find a hat for a dime,” responded Mardee. 
“Then you won’t have to call attention to your 
old hat any more. I don’t think you have put it 
on this winter without saying, ‘I wish you would 
look at this hat! Isn’t it a sight?’ ” 

“All right for you!” retorted Sally. “I’ll in¬ 
vest a dime in a pair of scissors for you to cut 
oft the tail of your skirt. I’m just as tired of 
hearing you say, ‘I simply must have the skirt of 
this sailor suit cut off — it is too long in the 
back’! ” Sally’s mincing treble was not a real 
imitation of Mardee, but an exaggeration that 
brought forth a burst of laughter from the others. 

“Somebody ought to give Begorry a new pair 
of gloves, poor child,” she continued, holding up 


OF A NUMBER OF THINGS 149 


Begorry’s hand to display a hole in the thumb of 
her glove. “What will you give me, Begorry, if 
I do that?” 

Begorry grinned and replied in the broadest 
brogue she could assume, “Thot dipinds. If 
ye ’re not going to spind anny more on my gloves 
than Mardee is on your hat, Oi’ll give yez a 
pocketbook to hold what ye’ve got lift over. Oi 
guiss Oi kin git wan fur a doime.” 

“Now listen to that!” Sally besought the 
others. “Isn’t that just like Begorry? Merce¬ 
nary! Always thinking of filthy lucre. She 
would value a dollar and a half pair of gloves 
more than a ten-cent present, and never think of 
the spirit that prompted the gift. Ingrate!” 

Mardee suggested mischievously over her 
manipulations of the crepe paper, “it is nice to 
know Sally is so broad-minded about things of 
that sort herself, isn’t it, girls? Now when I 
start to buy her present, I sha’n’t worry at all. 
I shall just say to myself, ‘ Sally is too noble to 
notice what a thing costs. It is the spirit back 
of the gift she cares for, and I can save my 
money for something else!’ ” 

“It’s so convenient that she feels that way. 
As I laughed and told Begorry, I wish everybody 
did,” said Marilyn. 

Their shafts, however, went wide of the mark, 
for Sally’s face wore the expression habitual to 
it when inspiration was at work in her brain. 

Begorry was the first one to notice it. 

“Sally’s about to spring something,” she re¬ 
marked. 


150 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

“I know what let’s do!” Sally burst out, al¬ 
most in the same breath. 1 1 Let’s have an S-B- 
double-M Christmas tree and hang all our pres¬ 
ents for each other on it and open them all to¬ 
gether. We can have a ten-cent price limit and 
think up things that will be jokes to give.” 

The plan was received with acclaim. 

1 ‘ Sally, I’ll say you have some head, ’ 9 Marilyn 
paid tribute slangily. 

“T y,” answered Sally. 

“Y w,” Marilyn came back with the appropri¬ 
ate retort. They had long since discarded the 
more cumbersome forms of “thank you” and 
“you’re welcome.” 

“How much did that set of Montessori blocks 
Bunch has cost?” asked Begorry. 

Mardee laughed. “You mean the ABC blocks? 
I know what you are thinking of. I’m go¬ 
ing to buy Sally one of those Christmas cards 
with 4 Greetings’ on it in big, shiny letters, so she 
can wear it pinned to the front of her and save 
herself the trouble of saying it every time she 
sees any one she knows — just the way blind men 
wear signs that say ‘Help the blind’ instead of 
saying it themselves.” This was a reference to 
Sally’s favorite salutation. 

It was easy to get jokes on Sally, but Mardee 
gave much thought to the present she should get 
for Marilyn. Marilyn continued to be “snippy”, 
and while Mardee resented the injustice of her 
rancor, she felt sorry for her because she saw 
how her faults of disposition had poisoned her 
trust in her friends. 


OF A NUMBER OF THINGS 151 


“lam going to give Marilyn something besides 
what I put on the Christmas tree for her,” she 
told her mother. “I want to send her something 
specially nice, just to show her that I am friendly 
in spite of what has happened. And I don’t think 
I’ll try to make my little S-B-double-M present 
a joke on her, for fear she would not under¬ 
stand. ’ ’ 

“You’re a sweet girl, Mardee,” declared her 
mother. 

Mardee had her father’s gentle disposition and 
was at times almost incomprehensible to her en¬ 
ergetic mother. Mrs. Gray’s tone plainly implied 
that she did not think Marilyn deserved such 
kindness. 

It aroused Mardee to a defense of her friend. 
“Well, it would be dreadful to feel that people 
were thinking unpleasant things about you, 
wouldn’t it? And that is the feeling Marilyn 
has.” 

Mrs. Gray answered with decision, “If some¬ 
thing could just take her out of herself, she would 
cease to worry about what other people were 
thinking of her. She needs to think more of 
others and less of herself. Her trouble is a form 
of selfishness.” 

‘ ‘ But she was born that way, ’ ’ Mardee insisted. 
“You can’t stop being self-conscious and selfish 
just because somebody tells you to, can you?” 

“No, I suppose not,” her mother yielded some¬ 
what unwillingly. “What she needs is an ab¬ 
sorbing interest.” 

Mardee pondered over these words. She 


152 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

wished to establish the old friendly relation be¬ 
tween them for the sake of all the rest of the 
S-B-double-M’s, but she did not know how to do 
it. 

“I can’t give her an absorbing interest for a 
Christmas present, or I would,” she reflected 
whimsically. 

But a day or two later a way of giving 
Marilyn an interest to take her out of her¬ 
self opened up. Just at first Mardee did not 
recognize it. Miss Rhinebeck asked Mardee to 
come into her room for a few minutes after 
school. 

“I want my Freshman English classes to give 
a play along the lines of the school work,” she 
said. “I had a little play in mind which I 
thought would stimulate interest in the things we 
are reading in class, and I am planning to give 
the parts as a reward for excellence in English 
work. But the classes are large and there can’t 
be enough characters in the play to go around, of 
course. So I want to talk it over with a few of 
the girls who are eligible before I assign the 
parts. It will be a good deal of extra work for 
those who do take part, and I shall not require it 
of you if you do not wish to do it. Your grades 
are as high as those of any of my pupils and I 
think you would be an appropriate choice for the 
character I had in mind for you. Do you think 
you should care to do that for me?” 

“To be in a play? Oh, Miss Rhinebeck, you 
know I should love it!” exclaimed Mardee with 
a ready enthusiasm that encouraged Miss Rhine- 


OF A NUMBER OF THINGS 153 

beck in her project and warmed her heart to her 
willing little ally. 

“Good!” she smiled. 

“But — oh, Miss Rhinebeck,” said Mardee, 
with a sudden change of expression from delight 
to thoughtfulness. “Couldn't you let Marilyn 
Gibson take the part you were going to give me ? ’’ 

“Why is that?” asked the teacher, surprised, 
but confident that some problem was troubling 
Mardee’s sympathetic heart. 

“I think she’d love to do it as much as I should. 
And I know she’d do it better. Miss Rhinebeck, 
you can’t think what a good actress she is! We 
had a play on Hallowe’en and even the grown 
people who saw it said she really showed talent. 
But it wasn’t just on that account I wanted you 
to let her be in it—” 

Miss Rhinebeck was still smiling an encourag¬ 
ing smile. ‘ ‘ Well, why was it, then ? ’ ’ 

“It was because she looks so well on the stage 
— made up, you know, and in the footlights — 
and she enjoys that, you know, naturally — be¬ 
cause I think most of the time she has a feeling 
that people don’t admire her — and—oh, it just 
seems like an opportunity Marilyn ought not to 
miss! ’ ’ 

“I see.” Miss Rhinebeck nodded her head in 
a way that relieved the confusion Mardee felt in 
trying to make her involved explanation. 4 ‘ There 
isn’t any reason why I should not give Marilyn a 
part in this play. Her grades are sufficiently 
good to put her on the eligible list. But I don’t 
know why you couldn’t both take part. I shall 


154 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


count on you for one of my theatrical company 
and invite Marilyn to be another.’’ 

“Oh, grand!” cried Mardee gleefully. “And, 
Miss Rhinebeck, I suppose you had better not 
say anything to Marilyn about my suggesting her 
name. Marilyn is sensitive, you know, and she 
might get an idea you wouldn’t have thought of 
her without that.” 

Miss Rhinebeck answered, “I understand,” 
and that much was settled. 

It was as Mardee had thought. Marilyn was 
delighted at being asked to be in the play, and 
the pleasure she felt in anticipation of the event 
went far to improve her state of mind. The play 
was not to be produced until after Christmas, and 
there were not even to be any rehearsals until 
the holidays were over, but the participants were 
given their parts so they could begin to study 
them as soon as work on the examinations was 
over. 

The Christmas examinations loomed larger 
than anything else on the high school horizon, 
and particular interest attached to the Freshman 
grades because of their bearing on the Davis 
medal. The whole school watched the relative 
ranking of the first-year students in the hope of 
picking the winner for June. 

It was pretty well known among the Freshmen 
themselves that the race was narrowing down to 
a few, those whom Sally had dubbed “Geniuses 
& Co.” And the three principal stockholders in 
that company, to continue Sally’s metaphor, were 
Branch St. John, Roscoe Lawhead, and Mardee. 


OF A NUMBER OF THINGS 155 


Those three had acquired a sort of prestige in 
classes. They had invariably been among the 
few who had translated correctly with ease the 
most difficult passages in Latin. If a knotty 
problem arose in geometry, it was to those three 
that every one looked for a solution. And it was 
always those three names which led the list when 
the test grades were posted on the bulletin board. 

There were two bulletin boards in the high 
school,— one in the lower hall for Middle and 
Senior class announcements, and one in the upper 
hall for matters pertaining to Freshmen alone. 

During the last week before Christmas, when 
the grades for yesterday’s exams were posted 
each day, the Freshman marks were of enough 
interest to bring a good many students out of 
the lower study hall up the stairs. 

An interested murmur of comment always 
greeted the results as they went up. 

‘ ‘ Branch St. John, Roscoe Lawhead, and Mar- 
dee Gray are running neck and neck.” 

“St. John’s ahead to-day.” 

“But Mardee beat him yesterday.” 

“And they say Lawhead is likely to come out 
first in physics.” 

Branch St. John was first in Latin with 97, and 
Mardee and Roscoe both got 96. 

Roscoe Lawhead fulfilled prophecies and got 
the highest mark in physics, 97; Branch got 95, 
and Mardee, whose bent was not scientific, was 
four or five per cent, lower, with several boys of 
the class above her. 

It looked bad superficially, but careful calcula- 


156 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


tion showed that her lead over the other two in 
both history and English made np for it. They 
tied in geometry. They all got 100. 

11 There’s another race being run that that high 
school crowd doesn’t know anything about,” said 
Doctor Gray, when Mardee told him of the in¬ 
terest the Freshman grades aroused. “And 
that’s the race between Mardee Grasshopper and 
Mardee Ant. But I think this good work at 
school has put Mardee Ant a length ahead, and 
I hope she’ll never lose the ground she has 
gained. ’ ’ 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M ’s TREE 

“Here comes ‘Supper’ at last!’’ cried Mardee. 

“Glory be!” breathed Sally in theatrical re¬ 
lief. “I shouldn’t have missed Marilyn and Be- 
gorry, but I was so afraid we’d have to go but¬ 
terless to bed.” 

“Look who’s here!” called out Marilyn, from 
halfway down the car-shed, holding on high a 
pound of butter in a carton. 

“Good morning, Merry Sunshine,” Sally 
greeted it affectionately. “Oh, don’t be so poky, 
you two. I think I hear the car coming.” 

The idea of the S-B-double-M’s Christmas tree, 
suggested that day in Mardee’s dining room, had 
“just growed” like Topsy until it had resulted 
in an expedition to Crow’s Nest Mountain, and 
Doctor and Mrs. Gray had consented to chaper¬ 
one the party from one afternoon to the next at 
their summer cottage. Bab and a special friend 
of hers named Joycie Rankin had been included, 
and the girls had divided into three groups, each 
to furnish one meal. Marilyn and Begorry had 
earned the title of “Supper” by undertaking to 
serve the evening meal, Mardee and Sally were 
“Breakfast”, and Bab and Joycie were to pre- 


158 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


pare to-morrow’s dinner with the help of Mrs. 
Gray. “Supper”, in comparing notes after they 
had reached the appointed meeting place, had 
discovered the lack of any butter for their meal 
and gone off to procure the missing article. 

“All aboard!” shouted Bab and Begorry in 
concert, as the Crow’s Nest Mountain car thun¬ 
dered under the roof of the transfer station 
where the party was waiting. There was a 
scramble for baskets and boxes and suit cases 
and the girls settled themselves for the long ride 
to the foot of the mountain. Mrs. Gray was with 
them. The doctor was to meet them at the top 
in his automobile. 

“Where’s Seldom Fed?” inquired Begorry. 

Mardee answered, ‘ ‘ Daddy has him in the 
automobile. That was one of the reasons he went 
up in the auto. He wanted to have it there in 
case of an emergency call, but they won’t take 
Seldom on the street cars, and there was nobody 
to look after him at home with Lighty gone to 
Ringgold to ‘take her Christmas’ at her sister’s.” 

At the top of the Crow’s Nest Mountain In¬ 
cline they were greeted most enthusiastically by 
Seldom Fed. Doctor Gray was talking to the 
clerk of the Crow’s Nest Hotel. Seldom, shut up 
in the automobile, stood up with his forepaws on 
the door and yapped excitedly at sight of them. 

“Poor Seldom, are you lonesome?” sympa¬ 
thized Marilyn, and down came Seldom’s ears. 
“Thump, thump” went his tail on the floor in 
answering self-pity. 

“Want us to go over with you?” Marilyn con- 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S TREE 159 


tinned in the same tone of commiseration, and 
Seldom gave way to whimpering. 

“Seldom! You old humbug!” Mar dee re¬ 
proached him in a voice of bantering laughter, 
which brought his ears and tail back to normal. 

“He’d have plenty of company if we all tried 
to go over with him, wouldn’t he?” commented 
Sally, surveying the array of baggage spread out 
around them on the station platform. 

A little, rocking street car bumped and 
thumped its way around the flat mountain top 
from the incline, furnishing a means of transport 
to those cottagers who lived back off the brow. 

“Mother, you ride over with Daddy and Sel¬ 
dom Fed. I think the street-car conductor 
would be willing to chaperone us from here,” 
suggested Mardee. 

“Gowing owver on the cow?” asked the hotel 
clerk, when Mrs. Gray had taken her seat beside 
her husband and the girls were left standing on 
the platform. He was an Englishman with a 
marked accent, and in spite of his polite inten¬ 
tions only the timely arrival of the “cow” in 
question prevented a premature burst of hilarity. 

“Hivin hilp us!” gasped Begorry, wiping her 
eyes, “it does feel a little like riding on a cow, 
doesn’t it?” They were bouncing up and down 
around the crooked track, safely out of sight of 
the hotel clerk, and the other girls were still hold¬ 
ing their sides in spasms of mirth. 

“I’ll take your word for it,” Sally found 
breath enough to reply. “I have ridden on a 
horse and a donkey and an elephant — and a goat 


160 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

once when I was little — but I have never hap¬ 
pened to ride on a cow. You say it feels like this, 
Begorry?” 

“I wish I had seen Begorry taking that ride 
— or have you done it more than once ?’ ’ Marilyn 
joined in, before Begorry had had time to strike 
back. 

“Now I know why you girls call her Bossy 
every now and then,” was Joycie Ranking con¬ 
tribution to the spirit of the occasion,— a suc¬ 
cessful one, which redoubled the gale of glee. Be¬ 
gorry had never lived down the nickname be¬ 
stowed on her the day she had insisted on Sally’s 
laughing in the kodak picture Branch St. John 
took. 

They had been reduced to a pulp of merriment 
by the time they had alighted from the “cow” 
and made their way through the woods to the 
three-room rustic cabin that sheltered the Grays 
in summer. 

Doctor Gray had already built a huge wood 
fire in the living-room and according to his wife’s 
report had gone to cut down a Christmas tree, 
and Mrs. Gray was making up the beds. The six 
girls were to share the one bedroom of the cot¬ 
tage and Doctor and Mrs. Gray were to sleep on 
the Davenport bed in the living-room. 

“Now, ‘Supper’, get to work. Get a fire made 
in that stove and give us something to eat, ’ ’ com¬ 
manded Sally, throwing herself into the best 
easy-chair with a provoking assumption of 
leisure. 

“Put in more wood than that. See that the 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S TREE 161 


teakettle is filled. Don’t forget to open the 
draughts,” she gave orders while the meekly obe¬ 
dient Marilyn and Begorry performed their al¬ 
lotted task. “Gibs, be sure to put plenty of 
water in the hash and don’t let the soup scorch.” 

“Begorry, lay that tablecloth straight,” or¬ 
dered Mardee, imitating Sally’s manner. “It’s 
almost impossible to find a servant who can set 
the table decently.” 

“Gibs, I am afraid you are putting those rolls 
in the oven too soon. They will be dried out be¬ 
fore the rest of the supper is done,” Sally went 
on, badgering Marilyn. “Yes, good servants are 
very hard to get these days,” she interrupted 
herself to complain to Mardee, who nodded a 
solemn assent. 

“Oh, just you wait until breakfast, me dar- 
lints!” warned Begorry, and Marilyn selected a 
light roll from the pan she was about to put into 
the oven to warm over and shot it through the 
kitchen door, taking aim at Sally’s head. Sur¬ 
prising as it seemed, even to Marilyn herself, the 
roll took Sally full in the face. 

“Avaunt, varlet!” cried Sally in Arthurian 
protest, hurling the missile back, but with so 
much less effect that it hit the stovepipe and 
glanced off into the coal bucket. * 

“Does thot suit yer ladyship anny bitter?” Be¬ 
gorry inquired of Mardee, relaying the tablecloth 
with meticulous precision. 

Mardee drawled with languid hauteur, “Yes, 
that will do, I think.” 

“Very will, me lady,” began Begorry, humbly 


162 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

enough, and finished with an impudent grimace, 

4 ‘ we ’ll see you lay it at breakfast, Mard, old 
girl. ’ ’ 

The living-room ran the full length of the front 
of the house and served as dining room and sit¬ 
ting room combined. Begorry was setting the 
table in one end of the long apartment while her 
leisurely mistresses reclined at the other, and 
Marilyn could be seen through the open door at 
work in the kitchen beyond. Bab and Joycie 
were helping Mrs. Gray in the bedroom. 

“Don’t talk to the servants, girls. It might 
make them too familiar/’ cautioned Bab, leaning 
up against the bedroom doorjamb with an af¬ 
fectation of ease. 

Mrs. Gray pointed out of the front windows. 
“I think I can find a job for all you lazy hones!” 
she announced in defense of poor, downtrodden 
‘ 4 Supper. ’ ’ 

Doctor Gray had come up on the porch with a 
little cedar tree and the girls threw open the door 
to welcome him and help him set it up. They 
had brought with them strings of popcorn and 
cranberries, and 4 ‘Breakfast’’ and “Dinner” set 
to work by the fire making paper chains, allow¬ 
ing “Supper” to finish their job in peace. It was 
a very much festooned little tree by the time the 
two had set their steaming dishes on the table. 
A tin spoon beaten on a dishpan, although quite 
unnecessary as an announcement, was used with 
deafening effect when this last was accomplished. 

“See here, do I have to serve all these plates?” 
asked Doctor Gray in mock horror, pointing to 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S TREE 163 


the plates piled up at the head of the table. 

“No, sir, you don’t!” replied Sally promptly. 
“I am the father of this family,’’ and she 
plumped herself down in his chair at the head 
of the table. 

“Mardee is the mother,” she went on. “Joy- 
cie is our little boy, and Bab is the baby. Doctor 
and Mrs. Gray are the twins. Begorry and Mari¬ 
lyn, you may eat at the table with the family. 
Now you must all do exactly what I say, for I 
shall not spare the rod and spoil the child. Be 
seated!” 

The stern father gave his command in a voice 
of thunder and his family very meekly obeyed. 

“What do you think of the servants? I think 
we had better fire them,” declared “Father” 
when the meal was nearly over. 

“I think the way the dishes have been emptied 
would serve as a recommendation for any cooks,” 
said Doctor Gray, but was frowned down for his 
temerity in defense of “Supper” by the fierce 
parent. 

“Don’t dispute my word, Twinny! This is the 
last meal these servants shall prepare. Mother 
and I will get breakfast ourselves.” 

“And Gibs and I will be the grandmothers 
then!” cried Begorry. 

“And won’t we lie in bed late and make the 
young folks wait on us? Oh, boy!” gloated 
Marilyn. “We’ll pay them back for the way they 
have treated poor ‘ Supper’!” 

After supper everybody pitched in and washed 
the dishes together. Then they hung their stock- 


164 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

ings in a row on the living-room mantelpiece and 
at ‘‘Father’s” command retired early, so as to 
be ready to exchange gifts in the morning. 

They retired, that is, to the bedroom,— not to 
bed. There were two double beds and a mattress 
on the floor on a row for them to sleep on. “ Sup¬ 
per”, “Breakfast” and “Dinner” were to sleep 
together, “Supper” occupying one bed, “Break¬ 
fast” another, and “Dinner” the third, and there 
was a lively fight for the possession of the two 
bedsteads until some one jumped on the one cap¬ 
tured and defended by “Supper” and broke it 
down. Then it had to be made up on the floor, 
too. “Breakfast”, through the weight of Sally’s 
authority as head of the family, had no difficulty 
in establishing their right to the one remaining 
bedstead, but their conquest proved to be a bar¬ 
ren triumph. 

There was a vaudeville show in costumes which 
might have given it the name of a lingerie dis¬ 
play, and a ballet on the beds, which were 
“bouncy” enough to make an excellent floor for 
such a performance, and a romp and a pillow 
fight which reduced the whole room to such a 
hopeless state of confusion that nobody could 
have told what covers belonged on what beds. 
Then all the covers were piled on “Dinner’s” 
bed and all six girls wrapped themselves in them 
and huddled together, telling ghost stories until 
some one suggested pickles. When they had come 
back from raiding the kitchen and everybody had 
grabbed what comforts and pillows they could 
wrest from the others, poor “Breakfast” 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S TREE 165 


emerged from the struggle with only one blanket 
and a light comfort, and after the fire went out 
they shivered with cold. 

“Give us another blanket, * Supper.’ You got 
ours,” they begged. 

“You got the best bed, didn’t you?” “Supper” 
retorted. “You don’t want to take our covers 
away from us, too!” 

“George never comes down my side street; 

The reason is — he has cold feet! ’ ’ 

Marilyn sang jeeringly from the chorus of a 
classic familiar to them all. 

11 George never foregathers where the boys and girls meet; 
The reason is — he has cold feet! ’ ’ 

Begorry took up the refrain. 

11 George never has a nickel when the fellows treat; 

The reason is — he has cold feet! ’ ’ 

Bab and Joycie joined in, and some one sang an¬ 
other verse of “Cold Feet” at intervals all 
through the night. 

Towards morning “Breakfast” stole most of 
the covers off “Supper’s” bed and when “Sup¬ 
per ’ ’ got cold enough to wake up, the fight began 
all over again and did not end until at six o’clock 
when Mardee went into the kitchen for wood and 
brought back enough to make a fire. 

Before the girls were dressed they could hear 
Doctor and Mrs. Gray moving about in the living- 


166 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

room, and when, before daylight, Mrs. Gray 
called them, they found the room bright and cozy 
with firelight and greeted with bursts of glee a 
table in the middle of it piled high with fruit and 
nuts and candy. 

“Oh, yum! Yum!” smacked Begorry. 

“What’s the matter with Doctor and Mrs. 
Gray?” demanded Sally in the familiar high 
school phraseology. 

“They’re all right!” the others took up the 
cue. 

“Who’s all right?” 

“Doctor and Mrs. Gray!” 

“Who says so?” 

“We all say so!” 

“Oranges and bananas, rah! rah! rah!” Sally 
finished the yell by herself. “Now everybody 
look away and appear unconscious while I slip 
these tokens of esteem into the stockings they 
were intended for.” 

They all made an elaborate pretense of putting 
their packages into each other’s stockings sur¬ 
reptitiously and feigned great surprise when 
they found their own stockings filled. 

“Why, 1! S. C. h b here!” cried Sally with both 
hands upraised. 

“S. C. must be Santa Claus,” hazarded 
Mardee. 

“ ‘Santa Claus has been here.’ Never mind 
the ‘1’ now,” said Marilyn, making a grab for 
her stocking. 

“It was just ‘look’ anyhow,” offered Sally 
generously. 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S TREE 167 

“See what is pinned to the toe of mine!” cried 
Bab. 

It was a rag doll with “For Bab” pinned con¬ 
spicuously to the front of it. 

“For Baby,” Sally read it mischievously. 
“Here, Snookums. Now the darlin’ won’t cry. 
I’d like to know the meaning of this!” she ex¬ 
ploded, unfolding a tall dunce cap stuck in the 
top of her own stocking. ‘ 4 There must have been 
some mistake. Begorry, this was probably in¬ 
tended for you,” and she forthwith clapped it 
on her long-suffering chum’s head. 

“Read what it says on the card,” suggested 
Marilyn. They were all sitting in a half-circle 
in the firelight with their lumpy stockings in their 
laps. 

“ ‘A means to show Miss Herrington you don’t 
know anything,’ ” read Sally, and was greeted 
with bursts of laughter. “All right,” she agreed 
good-naturedly, and taking the cap off Begorry’s 
brown hair set it on her own head. “I’ll never 
forget that awful day when I blurted out I was 
unprepared in roll call.” 

Begorry proposed a method of procedure. 
“Sally, open all yours first. If we take turns, 
none of us will miss anything.” 

“Why, bless the child! She has human intelli¬ 
gence, after all,” proclaimed Sally, with a patron¬ 
izing pat on Begorry’s knee. 

She took out, one after another, a set of letter 
blocks marked “Initials”, a pocketbook to hold 
her “filthy lucre”, a shoe placarded “To live in 
when you have so many children you don’t know 


168 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


what to do”, and a handkerchief “to wipe your 
eyes on when you think of the d d d b r.” 

“Though as I laughed and told Begorry, I’ll 
probably use my sleeve anyway,” she remarked. 

“Here’s another reference to that fatal day,” 
said Marilyn, unwrapping a toy chair out of her 
own stocking and reading aloud the inscription: 
“Gibs, take this chair and see if you can make 
Miss Herrington’s class entertaining.” 

“I have one, too,” confessed Begorry, ruefully 
exhibiting a little china cow wearing about her 
neck the name of “Bossy.” 

Another of Begorry’s presents which proved 
especially successful was a notebook “to keep all 
her information about Simon O’Rola in.” 

“If I ever find out his real name I’ll write it 
on the first page,” she promised Mardee, who 
had given it to her. 

Some one else had given her a book of Irish 
jokes. 

“Now, Mardee, it’s your turn,” said Marilyn, 
when she and Begorry had finished opening 
theirs. 

The first present Mardee unwrapped was a lit¬ 
tle match-safe head yawning so widely that the 
mouth held the matches. It bore the legend, 
“Mardee cramming for exams.” 

“Here, Dad, is a portrait of a friend of yours,” 
she said, stretching out her arm to hand it to her 
father. 

“Who is that?” he inquired. 

“Mardee Ant.” 

He smiled back. “I’ll keep it,” and he tucked 


THE S-B-DOUBLE-M’S TREE 169 


it in his pocket while Mardee unwrapped her next 
package. 

She got a pair of kindergarten scissors “to cut 
off the tail of her sailor suit”, and Sally’s gift 
was a T-square with no comment whatever on the 
accompanying card. 

She puzzled over this for some time until Be- 
gorry, accustomed to translating remarks in ini¬ 
tials, sang out “Tom”! and Mardee blushed 
crimson at the laugh that followed. 

“Poor Seldom! Didn’t ’oo get a thing V 9 Bab 
sympathized, with an arm about Seldom Fed’s 
neck when the presents had all been opened. 

“Never mind, Seldom. Here’s something for 
you.” Begorry rose and held up a lump of pep¬ 
permint candy from the table for him to jump 
for. Seldom Fed, who had been in a quiver of 
interest throughout the whole performance, 
sprang after it like a jack-in-the-box, and the 
girls took turns feeding him and making him 
jump. They ate oranges and bananas and 
cracked nuts by the fire until broad daylight, and 
then “Supper” heartlessly went back to bed to 
make up some of their lost sleep while “Break¬ 
fast” repaired to the kitchen to labor and toil 
for them. 

‘ ‘ Sally, have my coffee hot when I get up, and 
don’t let it boil but one minute,” commanded 
Marilyn. 

“Mard, old girl, I shall expect to find the cloth 
straight when you call me to breakfast,” cau¬ 
tioned Begorry, departing for the bedroom with 
a yawn. 


170 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“And don’t burn the biscuits, Lune, whatever 
you do,” Marilyn could not resist coming back 
for one last parting shot, with both arms 
stretched luxuriously over her head. “Do you 
remember how particular you were about the 
rolls last night? Well, as I laughed and told Be- 
gorry, he laughs best who laughs last , 9 9 she added 
teasingly with every a very broad. 


CHAPTER XIV 


AN ADVENTURE 

Before the morning was over every girl had 
had a nap and felt as much refreshed as though 
she had slept all night. But no one was very 
hungry when dinner time came, for they had 
eaten fruit and nuts and candy intermittently all 
morning. 1 ‘Dinner’s” really excellent repast 
was thrown away upon their jaded appetites, and 
the dessert with which Bab and Joycie had 
thought to distinguish themselves received only 
half-hearted praise. 

“What you girls need is some exercise in the 
open air,” prescribed Doctor Gray. “Put on 
your things and go out for a walk. Mother and 
I will wash the dishes.” 

“Don’t stay too long,” warned Mrs. Gray. 
“We must pack up our possessions in time to get 
back to town before dark.” 

“Marilyn has on a wrist watch. We will watch 
the time and be sure to get back early,” some of 
the girls assured her, and they set out, accom¬ 
panied by Seldom Fed. 

Marilyn and Mardee did not walk together. 
There was no open hostility between them. The 
girls were all together in one company, but when 
they separated into small groups Marilyn and 


172 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Mardee were never in the same one. Mar dee had 
made all the friendly advances she felt she could 
without seeming to thrust herself on Marilyn. 
She had sent her for her real Christmas gift a 
dainty hand-painted box filled with home-made 
candy, and she had put a pretty Christmas card 
in Marilyn’s stocking that morning. Marilyn 
had thanked her politely, hut without enthusiasm, 
for the box of candy, and had given her a present 
without any personal application at the S-B- 
double-M Christmas celebration. She still 
showed by her manner that she ‘ 4 would never 
trust Mardee again as long as she lived”, and 
Mardee’s feelings were hurt by her unresponsive¬ 
ness. 

They started out in the direction of the west¬ 
ern brow of the mountain. 

“Let’s go to Sunset Rock,” suggested Sally. 
Sunset Rock was a crag which commanded a wide 
view of the western valley. 

“You get a better view of the city from the 
Point, and it’s not so far,” amended fat Begorry. 
“I brought the marshmallows left over, and some 
matches. We can build a fire on the rocks and 
toast them before we start back.” 

4 ‘Reminds you of the day we cooked dinner 
down at the cave under the shoulder of the moun¬ 
tain, doesn’t it?” Mardee said to Marilyn. 

“Wonder if we’d have time to go there?” 
Marilyn replied. 

Sally said, “I didn’t know there was a cave 
under the shoulder of the mountain.” 

“Neither did I until the Gibsons showed it to 


AN ADVENTURE 


173 


me when we were up here for Mr. Gibson’s birth¬ 
day,” Mardee told her. It seemed ages ago that 
she and Marilyn had had that friendly visit to¬ 
gether. Together they told the others about 
cooking dinner in the cave and being frightened 
by seeing Roscoe Lawhead through the under¬ 
brush. 

“Let’s go there and see it,” proposed Sally. 
“It won’t take any longer to climb down over 
the shoulder than to go clear out to the Point, 
and we could toast our marshmallows there.” 

The outcome of the matter was that they set 
off to the head of the steep climb down over the 
shoulder. They walked with swinging strides. 
It was a beautiful sunshiny day, typical of the 
Southern winter, cold enough to make walking 
pleasant, crisp but not bitter, and warm in the 
sheltered spots. The great bare rocks on the side 
of the mountain seemed to bask in the sun, and 
standing on the top before the steep descent, the 
girls seemed to see the whole world spread out 
at their feet and to be as high as the buzzards 
circling about against the vivid blue of the sky 
before them. Seldom Fed tore through the un¬ 
derbrush, chasing bugs and shadows, and making 
long flying leaps over gulleys and bushes in an 
ecstasy of joy. 

They swung down over the side of the moun¬ 
tain, clinging to the trees, slipping, sliding, gasp¬ 
ing, laughing, and letting themselves down by any 
support they could find. Once Sally sat down 
and clung to a tree while the other girls slid down 
a steep slope holding on to one of her feet, and 


174 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


then Sally let go and the others caught her as 
she slid into their arms. 

“The saints pr-r-resarve us when it comes to 
getting back up again, ’’ sighed Begorry in 
despair. 

“Oh, we can find a better place than this,” 
Mardee assured her. “But it will take longer to 
come back than it will to go down.” 

“I can never get through here!” wailed Be¬ 
gorry, as they started single file through a narrow 
pass between the rocks. 

Marilyn named the spot “Fat Man’s Squeeze”, 
and Sally declaimed: 

“Who enters here leaves hope behind!” 

“Laves paces of his skin behoind, ye mane,” 
lamented Begorry. 

“Lives of fat men all remind us 
We can make our shape sublime 
And in passing leave behind us 
Skin upon the rocks of time,” 

Sally paraphrased. 

With Sally pulling and Mardee pushing 9 they 
managed to get Begorry through with a whole 
skin, and without mishap reached the cave. 

“Fill you with memories, Mardee?” asked 
Sally slyly, as they were all gathering wood to 
make a fire. “I hope you brought your T-square 
along to keep you company. ’ ’ 

Mardee raised a big stick threateningly and 
Sally dodged and fled, with Mardee in pursuit. 

They built a fire without any trouble, and the 
marshmallows, toasted after their vigorous climb 


AN ADVENTURE 


175 


and eaten in the outdoor air, tasted better than 
the really delicious dinner they had been too slug¬ 
gish to enjoy. Lying down in the comfortable 
cave, out of the wind and warmed by the after¬ 
noon sun, pillowed on soft beds of dry leaves and 
enjoying the splendid view of the river and the 
city, they were so completely at their ease that 
they forgot to notice the time. 

“Marilyn, is it getting late?” Mardee asked 
at last. 

Marilyn glanced at her wrist. 

“It’s four o’clock!” she exclaimed, sitting up 
suddenly. 

“And it gets dark by six!” gasped Joycie 
Rankin. 

“We ought to be at home again in less than 
half an hour!” said Bab. 

“We can never do it in this world,” declared 
Begorry. 

“I believe we could get back to the cottage 
more quickly by going down to the foot of the 
mountain and taking the incline and the street 
car than by trying to walk back with this awful 
climb over the shoulder to make,” suggested 
Sally. 

Mardee agreed. “I believe we could. It is not 
far down to the railroad track from here, and we 
can follow the track around to the incline sta¬ 
tion. There is a trestle over that little stream, 
though.” She ended dubiously and pointed to 
the torrent that rushed down the mountain side 
just beyond them toward the city. 

“I guess it will be safe enough to walk the 


176 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

trestle,’’ said Sally. “Two trains have passed 
since we have been here. Surely it will be a long 
while before another one comes.” 

The climb down to the railroad track was a 
short one and not difficult, and once on the right 
of way they were able to make good time. 

Mardee and Begorry led the way down and 
reached the track first. Bab and Joycie came 
next, and Sally and Marilyn were last. They 
were delayed for a few minutes when the strap 
of Marilyn’s leggings caught on a projecting 
root and she had to stop to rebuckle it. The girls 
were all dressed in the knickers and leggings 
which were the favorite costume for roughing it 
on Crow’s Nest Mountain. Mardee and Begorry, 
with Seldom Fed trotting before them, crossed 
the trestle without any trouble and stopped at the 
end to wait for the others. 

“How the water roars over the rocks down 
there,” commented Begorry. “You can scarcely 
hear your own voice when you are in the middle 
of the trestle with the water directly under you. ’ ’ 

Just as the two younger girls joined Mardee 
and Begorry, Marilyn and Sally stepped on to the 
trestle from the other side. The four who had 
already crossed stood watching them, fortunately, 
for if they had not been facing in their direction 
they would never have seen the train which 
rounded the mountain behind the two girls on the 
trestle. 

“Marilyn! Sally! Look behind you! A train 
is coming!” they shrieked in confusion. 

But the two on the trestle were deafened by the 


AN ADVENTURE 


177 


noise of the water pouring over the rocks below 
them,— as deaf to the voices of their friends as 
they were to the rush of the train. 

The girls on the land made frantic gestures, 
seeking to attract their attention. They waved 
their arms, they pointed in the direction of the 
train, they made trumpets of their hands and 
hallooed, they whistled, they waved their hand¬ 
kerchiefs. Seldom Fed became infected by their 
excitement and added his furious barking to the 
general confusion. But the two on the trestle 
were shouting at each other in conversation un¬ 
conscious of danger, oblivious of their surround¬ 
ings. 

It all happened in a moment. Mardee per¬ 
ceived that unless they could be made to hurry 
they were certain to be overtaken by the train. 
And she saw that the only way to make them 
understand was to run back on the track and tell 
them. 

“If I had had time to think I might not have 
been so bold,” she modestly declared afterwards. 
But she had no time to think. With an instinct 
of protection she ran towards them, gesticulating 
and pointing. When at last the girls became 
aware of their danger the train was almost on 
them. Mardee turned with them and the three 
ran as fast as their feet would carry them over 
the treacherous ties. 

“Roll down the bank!” shouted Mardee, 
throwing herself off the track the moment she 
reached the spot where the rails touched land 
again. There was a long, steep fill before the 


178 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

track came to level ground. The other two fol¬ 
lowed Mardee’s example and went sliding and 
rolling down the steep embankment to the loose 
earth and broken rock at the bottom. Marilyn, 
the last one, had barely left the track when the 
train thundered past so close that the great drive 
wheels and pistons seemed to fill her whole range 
of vision. All three were covered with mud and 
scratched and bruised and disheveled w T hen they 
picked themselves up in the ditch at the bottom. 
The sharp rocks had cut their skin and torn their 
clothes, and they were weak from fright. But 
Sally and Mardee managed to stand on their feet. 

Marilyn, however, gave a gasp and sank back 
half-fainting, when she attempted to rise. 

“Are you hurt?” asked Mardee. 

“It’s my ankle. I suppose it’s sprained.” 
Even with the faintness of her voice and the ef¬ 
fort she made to speak at all, there was more of 
warmth in Marilyn’s tone than there had been 
since the quarrel. 

‘ ‘ Oh, Mardee! ’ 9 she sobbed, throwing her arms 
around her neck. “I think I may be going to 
faint, and if I do I want to say first of all — thank 
you — and forgive me.” 

Mardee disclaimed any credit. “Why, Mari¬ 
lyn, you would have done the same thing your¬ 
self.” 

The other girls and the dog were clambering 
down to them by that time in a zigzag path less 
difficult than the precipitous descent the three 
who had so narrowly escaped death had been 
obliged to make. 


AN ADVENTURE 


179 


Marilyn did not faint, and found that by put¬ 
ting her arms around the necks of two girls she 
was able, with the support of another from be¬ 
hind, to drag along on her one good foot. But 
the sprained ankle was causing her excruciating 
agony. They had to follow the ditch over rocks 
and bushes and every sort of irregularity to a 
place where the ascent to the track was less steep. 
The path was difficult enough for the girls who 
were not hurt. 

“I can never reach the incline,” groaned 
Marilyn. 

“Roscoe Lawhead said his house faced the rail¬ 
road track just beyond the trestle !” cried Mar- 
dee, the memory of his words coming to her like 
an inspiration. “If we can get you that far, you 
can be made comfortable while somebody goes 
for help.” 

Bab and Joycie went to look for the house and 
came back reporting that they had found it, and 
with a great deal of difficulty they all helped 
Marilyn to reach it. It was a little two-room 
cabin with a dogtrot between the rooms, the typi¬ 
cal house of the Southern mountaineer. It was 
set on the slope in a clearing without any en¬ 
closure about it, a meandering path leading up to 
it from the railroad track, and a motley collec¬ 
tion of tumble-down sheds, pigpens, chicken 
roosts, and washtubs behind it. A flock of dirty 
children ran like scared rabbits at the approach 
of strangers, but one little girl of nine or ten ap¬ 
peared on the porch between the two rooms to 
await developments. She did not speak until the 


180 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


girls addressed her, and when asked if Marilyn 
might lie down on a bed in the house she replied 
with a sort of frightened politeness in the 
affirmative. 

Inside, the house was in disorder, as might 
have been expected of a house that had held so 
many children, but it was not dirty, and the girls 
perceived that the dirt on the children was only 
external, such as any child would acquire after 
playing all day. 

i ‘Maw hasn’t come home yet. She works down 
in St. Elmo,” explained the little ten-year-old. 
St. Elmo was the suburb at the foot of the 
mountain. 

‘‘What does she do?” asked Mardee, just to be 
making conversation. 

“She cleans up for folks by the day,” explained 
the child. 

“You are Roscoe’s sister, aren’t you?” Sally 
asked. 

“Yes’m. Roscoe ain’t here neither. He works 
afternoons and Saturdays and holidays in Mr. 
Stone’s store.” 

“Do you stay here and take care of the 
younger children all day while your mother and 
Roscoe are gone?” inquired Begorry. 

“Yes’m. Florry and Myrtle work in the medi¬ 
cine factory and the rest of us stay here.” 

“Don’t you go to school?” 

“No’m. I went till last year while Myrtle 
stayed with the little fellers, but now Myrtle is 
in the medicine factory and I stay at home. J. P. 
and Leafy are in school. When Leafy gets big 


AN ADVENTURE 


181 


enough to look after Lady Kate and Benny, I 
reckon I’ll work in the medicine factory.” 

“How far did you get in school?” 

“I was in the third grade.” 

Begorry had been putting the questions while 
Mardee and Sally were washing the dirt off their 
cuts and bruises and setting to rights their hair 
and disordered clothing. The two others were 
doing what they could for Marilyn. 

“Did you hear all of that?” Begorry asked in 
an aside of Mardee. 

Mardee nodded with a glance of pity at the 
child. 

“I’m all right now,” she said. “I think I had 
better go up to the cottage right away and tell 
Mother and Daddy what has happened and bring 
Daddy down here to see what he can do for Mari¬ 
lyn.” 

But Bab turned from Marilyn with a character¬ 
istically competent suggestion. “You had better 
stay here, Mardee — you and Sally. Somebody 
ought to stay with Marilyn, and after the shock 
that you and Sally have had I am sure that Daddy 
would say the best thing you two could do was to 
keep still.” 

The other girls agreed with her when they had 
talked it over, and it was finally arranged that 
Begorry and Bab and Joycie should go back to the 
cottage to get Doctor Gray and assist Mrs. Gray 
in bringing the baggage down the mountain. 
Sally and Mardee were not seriously hurt, but 
they agreed to await Doctor Gray’s instructions 
where they were. 


182 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Mrs. Lawhead came home before Doctor Gray 
arrived. She was a thin, tired-looking woman 
with an intelligent face that told plainly where 
Roscoe got the brains and ambition that had made 
him what he was in spite of difficulties. She was 
most sympathetic when she heard what had hap¬ 
pened to the girls, and did what she could to make 
them as comfortable as possible. 

4 ‘Run down to the store, Luvertis,” she said to 
the little girl who had done all the talking before, 
“and bring home a pone of light bread and a box 
of tea. I ain’t got enough in the house to cook 
you-all supper,” she explained to her guests, “but 
I aim to make you some tea and toast. I think it 
ought to sorter revive you.” 

Mardee and Marilyn and Sally begged her not 
to do it, realizing the sacrifice that the spending 
of a single penny must mean to her, but she in¬ 
sisted with hospitable firmness, and Luvertis de¬ 
parted on her errand. 

“You-all hadn’t ought to have tried to walk 
that trestle,” Mrs. Lawhead went on. “There’s 
a train acrost there every few minutes all day. 
This pass through the mountains is the only way 
into the city from this side, and four or five rail¬ 
roads use this here track.” 

When Luvertis came back Roscoe was with her. 
He said Luvertis had told him'about them and he 
had asked Mr. Stone to let him come home to be 
of some assistance if possible. 

“Can’t I telephone to your folks for you?” he 
asked. 

The girls, more and more filled with gratitude 


AN ADVENTURE 


183 


to the whole kindly family, thanked him but re¬ 
plied that they had decided to wait until Doctor 
Gray came and let him tell them what he thought 
it best for them to do. 

Doctor Gray came in a little while, and after 
looking them over, told Sally and Mardee that 
they were all right. He disinfected their scratches 
and asked Roscoe to take them to the incline sta¬ 
tion and see that they joined Mrs. Gray and the 
rest of the party there. 

‘ ‘ And go into town in these clothes on the street 
car?” cried Mardee. 

“It is already dark. The mothers will be get¬ 
ting anxious,’ ’ said Doctor Gray. 

But when he had examined Marilyn’s ankle and 
learned of the facilities for removing her com¬ 
fortably from the cabin he yielded to Mrs. Law- 
head’s importunities to let her keep Marilyn for 
the night, and asked Roscoe to telephone Mrs. 
Gibson from the foot of the mountain. 

Mr. and Mrs. Gibson came out to the Lawhead’s 
cabin as soon as they got the telephone message. 
Doctor Gray did not leave until they had arrived. 
Then Roscoe lighted him down the steep slope and 
along the railroad track to his car, and he and 
Seldom Fed departed. Mr. and Mrs. Gibson slept 
that night in St. Elmo and did not attempt to take 
Marilyn home until it was light enough to get her 
to their automobile in comfort. She spent that 
night with her new friends, and made the acquaint¬ 
ance besides of Florry and Myrtle when they came 
back from the patent medicine factory where they 
worked. She found that they were girls of thir- 


184 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


teen and fifteen with their brother’s quick intelli¬ 
gence, though without the advantage of the amount 
of schooling he had had, and she came away with 
a deep admiration and respect for the whole Law- 
head family. 


CHAPTER XV 


POLITICS 

Marilyn did not walk again for five weeks. 
But the S-B-double-M’s gathered at her house 
in the afternoons when they got out of school 
and she kept up with everything that went on at 
school and among her friends. 

She sent for Mardee to come to see her the day 
she was brought home from the Lawheads’ and 
they had a long talk and came to a complete 
understanding. 

“I have found out that it was not your mother 
who telephoned to Mother the night after I told 
you about sending my picture to the Times / 9 
Marilyn told Mardee. 

“I asked Mother about it as soon as I got home 
from school that next day,” said Mardee, “and 
she told me she had not.” 

She did not add, as she might have, that she 
did not tell Marilyn so because it would have been 
useless. But Marilyn was in a very repentant 
mood, and Mardee, who was generous by nature 
anyhow, could well afford to be so now. 

Marilyn went on, “I wish I had asked Mother 
about it right away. I didn’t because I felt so 
certain that nobody could have known about it ex¬ 
cept Mrs. Gray. And then when I told Mother 


186 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


how I felt about your saving my life at the risk 
of your own when we had quarreled and were 
mad at each other, she heard about the trouble 
between us for the first time, and told me that it 
was Miss Daisy Long who had told her. Miss 
Daisy had just guessed it from my mailing a 
photograph to the Times through her window.” 

“It couldn’t have made any difference, 
though, if you had known it was Miss Daisy in¬ 
stead of Mother. Because you remember you 
said that the whole question was whether I had 
told anybody or not, and I had told Mother.” 

“Oh, Mardee, I am so sorry I said that!” 
Marilyn reached for Mardee’s hand and gave it a 
friendly squeeze. “Mother says you were ex¬ 
actly right — and so does Dad. They asked me 
to tell them what the trouble was between us, and 
I still felt that I had something on my side, but 
Dad said that he was gladder to have you for a 
friend of mine now than he was before, if pos¬ 
sible. And he’s been crazy about you ever since 
that visit you made us on the mountain. He said 
that a girl that wouldn’t keep a secret from her 
mother was sure to be a safe companion for any 
other girl. And Mother said she blamed herself 
for not having kept my confidence as your mother 
had kept yours. And then we had some love 
feast, believe me!” Marilyn’s eyes twinkled 
humorously in spite of her real sincerity. “I 
want to beg your pardon for all the hateful 
things I said and did,” she finished seriously. 

“Marilyn, you need not beg my pardon. I 
could see all the time how you looked at it.” 


POLITICS 


187 


“But I said I would never trust you again as 
long as I lived, and then you ran back on the 
trestle to tell me the train was coming!” 

“That was nothing. You see I wasn’t hurt.” 

“Oh, Mardee, if you had been! But since you 
were not, and nobody was hut me, I am glad the 
thing happened. Because unless something had 
occurred to make me talk it over with Mother, 
and especially Dad, I suppose I should have gone 
on forever seeing the thing all crank-sided and 
nursing a grudge against you. And do you know, 
Mardee, I am so much more comfortable inside 
now that I don’t feel unkindly towards any¬ 
body. ’ ’ 

“Well, I know I am a whole lot more com¬ 
fortable, too,” laughed Mardee gaily. “I think 
we shall always be better friends now.” 

Miss Bhinebeck had intended to have the play 
in January, but she postponed it until Marilyn 
was able to return, and in order that it might not 
be delayed any longer than necessary the girls in 
the cast held rehearsals at Marilyn’s house all 
the time that she was out of school. The charac¬ 
ters were all girls and there were only four of 
them. 

Mardee devoted herself very faithfully to her 
school work. The weather was bad — January 
and the early part of February were always 
murky and wet in Channingsburg — and there 
was no temptation outdoors to cause her to for¬ 
sake her books. 

There was a big cushioned rocking chair in the 
corner by the stove in the Grays’ dining room 


188 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

and Mardee liked nothing better than to curl np 
in its soft depths, with an orange to suck and a 
book to read and Seldom Fed snoozing comfort¬ 
ably at her feet, his nose on his paws. 

‘ 4 There wouldn’t be any Mardee Grasshopper 
if all the days were like these,” she told her 
father. “Mardee Ant has everything her own 
way when the pleasantest thing you can do is to 
sit by the fire and read.” 

At school a lively contest was on between the 
boys of the Freshman, and Senior classes. The 
Senior boys had ordered some caps in the high 
school colors with the number of their class year 
on them. The caps had come during the holi¬ 
days, and with the opening of school after the 
New Year, purple and white headgear had blos¬ 
somed forth wherever there were Seniors. But 
the Freshman boys, in revenge for the* upper 
class interference with their first meeting, deter¬ 
mined to make the Seniors defend their right to 
wear them. Whenever a Senior appeared in one 
he had to keep his attention on his head or he 
couldn’t keep his cap there. It was likely to be 
snatched oft and run away with by some Fresh¬ 
man. The Middle-class boys, of course, felt it 
incumbent upon their dignity to side with their 
fellow upper-classmen; and for three days, un¬ 
til the Freshmen conceded that the Seniors had 
established their right to wear their new bon¬ 
nets in peace, every recess and dismissal bell was 
a signal for a free-for-all fight. 

Across the street from the high school was a 
bakery run by a kind-hearted fat German named 


POLITICS 


189 


Schmitt and his wife and daughters. Mr. Schmitt 
— or * ‘ Schmitty ’’ as he had been known to high 
school students from time immemorial — was a 
friend to man and beast. He had sold enough 
penny cinnamon buns on credit to have wrecked 
another business, and he had put in a watering 
trough at the curb stone in front of his door out 
of this same spirit of willingness to serve free 
refreshments to those who were unable to pay. 

The favorite punishment meted out by the 
Seniors to the Freshmen for their rash interfer¬ 
ence with their betters was a ducking in this 
watering trough, and first and last, from the 
Freshmen’s tendency to band together and duck 
the ducker, nearly every boy in the high school 
had a bath in Schmitty’s tank. Fortunately the 
weather, though wet, was mild enough not to 
make such a form of battle dangerous to life. 
But naturally it was hard on the clothes of those 
warriors who received the scars of combat. 

Roscoe Lawhead did not take any part in the 
scuffling. He was older than the majority of 
even the Seniors, and he came to school in the 
pursuance of a serious purpose. He studied at 
recess and during the lunch hour because his 
work outside of school left him very little time 
for doing it then, and immediately after school 
he hurried away to the store where he clerked in 
the afternoons. 

There was a boy named Deaderick Broom in 
the Senior class who came from St. Elmo and 
who was well known to Roscoe. He was a poor 
boy and Roscoe knew that the damage to his 


190 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


clothes from a ducking in the watering trough 
would he a serious matter to his family. He 
was not even wearing a Senior cap, but on the 
Wednesday in the midst of the struggle, just as 
school was being dismissed, some boy in the front 
of the Freshman lines called out, “Let’s duck all 
the Seniors!” and Deaderick Broom was seized 
on with the rest of his classmates by the zealous 
defenders of the anti-cap faith. 

“You boys let Deaderick Broom alone,” said 
Roscoe Lawhead, quietly enough. 

“He’s a Senior, and the Seniors started this 
ducking business,” answered one of the boys who 
had captured young Broom. 

“Let him alone, I tell you,” demanded Roscoe 
with determination. 

“You make us!” sang out some little “fresh 
Freshie”, and his lead established the tone of 
all his associates. 

“All right I’ll make you,” replied Roscoe 
doggedly. Out of respect for Deaderick’s feel¬ 
ings he did not make any explanation of the stand 
he had taken, but having taken it he meant to 
stick to it. He put down his books and took oft 
his coat and announced that the boy that ducked 
Deaderick Broom had him to fight first. 

Of course the kind of boy who would insist 
upon ducking an inoffensive person in the face of 
a reasonable request not to was not the kind who 
would accept an invitation to fight, particularly 
with a boy very much larger than himself, and it 
was not necessary for Roscoe to jeopardize his 
body in defense of his friend. The group of 


POLITICS 


191 


Freshmen melted away, hurling insults such as 
“You’re a great Freshman president, you are!” 
and ‘ 4 Traitor!” at Roscoe, and Deaderick Broom 
was allowed to depart unducked. 

Thursday and Friday the youngsters whom 
Roscoe had defied nursed their rancor. By 
Thursday night the cap rush had come to an end. 
Friday they took out their spite by talking among 
others of the same stamp as themselves — the 
Bolshevik members of the class — but nothing 
came of their insinuations against Roscoe until 
Monday. On Monday, however, a boy whom 
Mardee knew very slightly came up to her during 
the lunch hour and asked her as vice-president 
of the Freshman class to call a meeting for that 
afternoon to impeach the president and put him 
out of office. 

Mardee laughed at him. 

“Do you want it announced that Roscoe is to 
be impeached for not ducking Deaderick Broom 
in Schmitty’s tank?” she inquired. 

But the matter was evidently not a joke to the 
spokesman who had approached her. 

“We mean to get rid of a traitor as presi¬ 
dent,” he said. 

Mardee stopped smiling and her eyes snapped 
at him angrily. 

“I will never call such a silly meeting!” she 
vowed. “And what is more, I wouldn’t attend it, 
and neither would any of the better element in 
the class. It is only the rag-tag and bob-tail who 
could make a serious matter of his defending his 
friend against a wetting. Perhaps Deaderick 


192 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


had a cold. You don’t know. He certainly would 
have had to take a long street-car ride in wet 
clothes. It was all in play, anyway, and for us 
to do such a thing would be a disgrace!” 

4 ‘Well, you needn’t think the ‘rag-tag and bob- 
tail’ can’t have a meeting without you,” said the 
boy. “We shall select a temporary chairman and 
hold a meeting whether you and your fine* friends 
come or not.” 

“Oh, I didn’t mean to call you ugly names,” 
cried Mardee in dismay. “But I don’t think the 
boys who wanted to call this meeting were at 
their best. It will put our whole class in dis¬ 
repute. Can’t you ask them to think it over 
first?” 

But the representative of the “rag-tag and 
bob-tail” departed in high dudgeon and Mardee 
flew to seek out Branch St. John and Don Willis 
and others of the boys whom she felt did belong 
to the better element of the class. 

“Oh, Branch, do you know what the boys are 
doing?” she asked, finding Branch at the diction¬ 
ary stand in the upper hall. 

“About that meeting?” he said. 

“Yes. They wanted me to preside as vice 
president. ’ ’ 

“Don’t you do it, Mardee. Don’t you even go 
to the meeting. But you girls stay around the 
school building here this afternoon. Don’t go 
home, because it may be that you could do some 
good if the thing came to a vote. We will keep a 
scout there and if it looks as if we were needed 
to help Roscoe we will go in.” 


POLITICS 


193 


So after school Mardee and the other S-B- 
double-M’s and a good many of the Freshman 
girls who had been warned by Mardee or by 
Branch and Don and their friends stayed in the 
girls’ gymnasium in the basement and awaited 
the result of the meeting upstairs. 

The boys holding the impeachment proceedings 
elected a temporary chairman and got down to 
business. In a little while a messenger from 
Branch’s crowd came to the gymnasium to say 
that Roscoe Lawhead’s resignation had been 
handed in and they needed all the votes of the 
conservatives towards not accepting it. 

“You girls come on upstairs and see what you 
can do,” he said. 

When the girls got upstairs they found, as they 
had expected, that the meeting was largely made 
up of the riffraff of the class who were in favor 
of accepting the resignation forthwith, and that 
while the steady crowd was against it, their num¬ 
bers were in the minority, so many of them hav¬ 
ing stayed away from unwillingness to lend their 
presence to anything they so disapproved of. A 
good many had waited to see if they could be of 
use, provided the other crowd succeeded in get¬ 
ting a quorum together, but a good many others 
had gone home and it was not possible to reach 
them. 

Irresponsible little hot-heads were popping up 
to make speeches in which they called Roscoe 
“traitor”; and the chairman, instead of remain¬ 
ing neutral, was urging the “disloyalty” of the 
president on the class. 




194 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Branch St. John had entered with the late¬ 
comers and he rose to make a speech. 

“Fellows,” he said, “I’d like to ask a question. 
Of course we’re only schoolboys, but in school an 
honor is an honor and a disgrace is a disgrace, 
just as it is out in the world. Now what I want 
to know is: Was this cap rush anything but fun, 
and is it a part of a class president’s duty to duck 
people in the watering trough? Are we going to 
punish our president with disgrace for such a 
trivial thing? For something done in play? 
Aren’t we acting too hastily — on the spur of the 
moment — without giving ourselves time for con¬ 
sideration? And aren’t we doing something we 
shall have cause to regret later on?” 

When he sat down there was a lot of applause 
in certain quarters and he had evidently won 
some converts, but a little excited Freshie 
jumped up and said that Roscoe Lawhead had 
never been a good president, anyway. 

Branch St. John jumped to his feet again. 

“I challenge anybody in this class to prove 
that in one single instance Roscoe Lawhead has 
ever been anything but a good president!” he 
shouted. ; 

“Well, I challenge Branch St. John to show 
us a single instance in which he has been a good 
president,” said the same Freshie. 

“That is not what this meeting is for,” Branch 
retorted. “Roscoe Lawhead is our president 
and we have to give sufficient cause why he 
should be put out of office.” 

“I’d like to know who nominated him in the 


POLITICS 


195 


first place,” said another of the Bolsheviki. “He 
never was one of ns. He is five or six years older 
than any of the rest of us.” 

Branch was jumping up and down like a jack- 
in-the-box. 

“I’ll tell you who nominated him for office,” 
he said, jumping up again. “I nominated him. 
And I’ll nominate him again for any honor I can 
get for him in recognition of his worth. And no 
one with any manliness or respect for honest ef¬ 
fort would desire to put him out of office for 
being older than the rest of us. He is older — 
and he’s a better man than most of us, too. 
Fellows, perhaps the rest of you didn’t know 
what I know about Roscoe Lawhead. Perhaps 
you didn’t understand. His father was a poor 
man with a family of eight children. His father 
had not had any education and though he worked 
hard he could not make enough to support his 
family. Roscoe had to work instead of going to 
school. But he wanted an education because he 
saw what it had meant to his father not to have 
one, and his mother encouraged him in trying to 
get one. He went to night school and worked in 
the day. It took him a long time to prepare for 
the high school, studying that way. Then his 
father died and for a year or two he couldn’t go 
to school at all. When some of the other chil¬ 
dren got old enough to go to work it was possible 
for him to come to school. It was possible be¬ 
cause his mother went out to work and because 
his sisters worked and because he works after 
school and on all his holidays. You can see he 


196 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


doesn’t come to school to play. I, for one, am 
proud to have such a president. I want to have 
him one of us, whatever his age. And the fellow 
that can’t see that he is to be respected for show¬ 
ing the courage to come to school with boys so 
much younger than himself hasn’t the manliness 
to know honest effort when he sees it! ” 

“Branch St. John ought to he a lawyer,” Mar- 
dee whispered to Sally, who was sitting in the 
same seat with her. ‘ ‘ He could melt the heart of 
any jury.” 

He had, in fact, accomplished a good deal by 
his oratorical efforts, for when at last the ballots 
were counted there was only a small majority in 
favor of accepting Roscoe’s resignation, in spite 
of the fact that the meeting was made up largely 
of those who in the first place had been all for 
impeaching him. 

‘ 4 It’s accepted,” announced the boy who had 
been counting the ballots. 

“And it’s a disgrace!” flashed out Branch St. 
John. 

When they started nominating a new president 
some one put up Don Willis’s name, but Don 
sprang up and withdrew it. 

“I would not accept such a nomination!” he 
exclaimed. 

Ed McKie was also nominated but refused to 
run. 

Sally whispered to Mardee, “It shows what 
kind of boys have done this thing if they can’t 
even pick a leader from among their own ranks.” 

Then Branch was nominated. 


POLITICS 


197 


“I withdraw my name,” he said disgustedly. 
“ And I suggest that to save time you look for the 
boy who started this and give him the office he 
wanted! ’ ’ 

They finally settled the matter by choosing a 
hoy who was not present, and when the voting 
began Branch St. John, Don Willis, and nearly 
all the boys who had opposed accepting Roscoe’s 
resignation took up their hats and left the study 
hall. 

Mardee and her friends, perceiving that their 
services were no longer needed, followed them 
out and went to the cloakroom for their hats and 
wraps. 


CHAPTER XVI 


MORE POLITICS 

“Good for you, Branch! You made a fine 
speech,” said Mardee, meeting Branch on the 
sidewalk in front of the high school as they were 
leaving the building. 

“Two or three fine speeches /’ Don corrected 
her, coming up just then to shake hands enthusi¬ 
astically with Branch. 

“You made a fine speech yourself when you re¬ 
fused to accept the nomination/’ Branch re¬ 
turned. 

“I wouldn’t accept such a presidency as a 
gift,” declared Don. 

“The whole affair is a burning shame!” said 
Branch. 

Mardee nodded. “I feel so sorry for Roscoe. 
I know his family. We girls went to their house 
the day we nearly got caught on the trestle, and 
no one could have been kinder than they were to 
us. I hope Mrs. Lawhead won’t feel badly about 
Roscoe’s having been asked to resign.” 

Don said that he was afraid she would not 
understand that Roscoe really had most of the 
class behind him and that his downfall had been 
accomplished by some of the boys whose opinions 
weren’t very important anyway. “But Roscoe 


MORE POLITICS 199 

will be the one who will have to tell her about it, 
and he won’t be likely to make that clear.” 

“Sally, let’s go out there and explain how it 
was to Mrs. Lawhead,” suggested Mardee. “I’d 
like to go anyway and thank her for her kind¬ 
ness to us.” 

“I think it would be fine if you girls would do 
that,” said Branch, and added in an aside to 
Mardee, “Mardee Ant gives good measure when 
she makes up for Mardee Grasshopper’s slights, 
doesn’t she?” 

“What on earth are you talking about, 
Branch?” asked Sally, but Branch only laughed 
mischievously, and as Don had begun to say 
something else, Sally failed to pursue the sub¬ 
ject in her interest in Roscoe’s affairs. 

She and Begorry and Mardee went to see Mari¬ 
lyn before they went home and told her all about 
the impeachment proceedings. 

“I wish I could go with you out to see Mrs. 
Lawhead,” Marilyn sighed. “I should like to do 
something to show her how grateful I am for all 
the trouble she went to for me.” 

“You will have a chance to do something for 
her when your ankle gets well,” Mardee com¬ 
forted her. 

Mardee and Sally and Begorry chose Sunday 
to go out to the Lawheads’, because that was the 
only day when they could count on finding the 
whole family at home. They sent word before¬ 
hand by Roscoe that they were coming and found 
all the children scrubbed within an inch of their 
lives and awaiting them in an agony of dread lest 


200 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

they get a spot of dirt on their freshly starched 
clothes before the company arrived. Florry and 
Myrtle were dressed up in the cheap silk waists 
and silk stockings and French-heeled shoes that 
constituted their Sunday best, and Mrs. Lawhead, 
a strong contrast in her plain cotton dress and 
stout shoes, welcomed them cordially. 

It was a pleasant sunshiny day and warm 
enough to sit out on the front steps of the cabin 
and admire the view of the river and the hills 
beyond. The cabin, not being as high as the cave 
on the other side of the trestle, did not command 
the same view of the city. 

After a while the children scattered and the 
girls made an opportunity to tell Mrs. Lawhead 
the story of the cap rush and the ducking in the 
watering trough, of Roscoe’s part in it and the 
impeachment proceedings. 

“He told me the boys had asked him to re¬ 
sign,” said his mother. Roscoe himself was not 
there. He had told the girls previously that he 
was invited to take dinner at Professor McKie’s 
that day. “It didn’t make so much difference to 
him as it might, if he had cared about holding 
office in the first place. But Roscoe ain’t got 
much time fer such.” 

Mardee answered as spokesman for the other 
girls. “Of course he hasn’t. That’s why he 
didn’t take any part in the ducking. And that’s 
why we felt it was so unjust to demand his 
resignation. ’ ’ 

“The reason he wouldn’t let the boys duck 
Deaderick Broom was because he knew Deader- 


MORE POLITICS 


201 


ick couldn’t afford to get his only suit of clothes 
wet. Roscoe would naturally understand that 
better than most of the boys. He wasn’t doing 
it in play, as some of them maybe thought he 
was. He don’t spend no time in play. He goes 
to school because he wants to git an education. 
Even at that, he wouldn’t go unless I made him, 
I reckon.” 

“Why not?” asked Sally. 

“Well, he sorter feels as if maybe ’tain’t fair 
fer him to be spending the time goin’ to school 
when he could make so much more if he worked 
regular. ’ ’ 

“But he’ll make so much more in the end if he 
has an education!” protested Mardee. 

“Of course he will. I want that he should git 
an education because it will give him so much 
better chance in life, but he would work and sup¬ 
port the family if I didn’t make him see that we 
are all glad to help him git some schoolin’ fer 
our sakes, as well as fer his’n. He can do a heap 
more fer us in the end if he can work with his 
head instead of his hands. And that’s why he 
goes to high school while Florry and Myrtle work 
in the medicine factory.” 

“Then they can go. to school later when Ros¬ 
coe is earning enough to help support them,” 
suggested Begorry hopefully. 

The mother sighed. 

“I wish they could go to school now. It may 
be too late to do any good if they ever can. I 
never had no schoolin’ but I lived back on the 
mountain among the mountain people. Florry 


202 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


and Myrtle work in the factory with girls that 
spend all their money fer silk stockings and 
clothes that won’t wash and picture shows and 
ice cream. I wisht they could git acquainted 
with girls like you-all and come to care whether 
they ever knew anything or not.’’ She shook her 
head. “But they’ve got to earn somethin’. 
There ain’t any help fer it. I can’t feed, eight 
mouths, and the medicine factory job’s as good 
as any other.” 

Mardee and Sally and Begorry came away feel¬ 
ing more liking and respect for Mrs. Lawhead 
than ever. 

“I wish we could do something to help them,” 
said Mardee. 

“They’re not the kind of people who would 
accept charity,” objected Sally. 

“I didn’t mean that,” answered Mardee. 
“She seemed to think that Florry and Myrtle 
would be better off with some friends like our 
crowd. I wish we could do something for the 
girls.” The thought stuck in the back of her 
mind, where it germinated like a seed and finally 
took root. 

Meanwhile politics were again rife in the high 
school, and this time the girls were mixed up in 
them. The big event of the winter term was al¬ 
ways the Senior party. There was no fixed date 
for it nor any custom governing the nature of the 
entertainment, and this year there were two fac¬ 
tions in the class, one desiring to give a Valen¬ 
tine party and the other in favor of a costume 
dance on Washington’s Birthday. Mardee, of 


MORE POLITICS 


203 


course, had no voice in the matter, hut she was 
interested because Tom Adair had long since in¬ 
vited her to go with him whenever they had it, 
and she hoped it would be on Washington’s 
Birthday because she was eager to powder her 
hair and wear Colonial costume. 

“And if you do have a dance, Tom, have it in 
the Armory so we can dance on that perfectly 
dandy floor again, ’ ’ she urged. 

“The Armory is the best place,” Tom agreed. 
“The Senior party is such a whopping big affair 
that by the time every boy has asked a gir] and 
every girl has asked a boy we have no room large 
enough for it in the high school — if we give a 
dance. Of course, if it is a stunt party and we 
can use the whole building, there is room enough, 
and there are a good many who want to give a 
stunt party. But I am not going to quit lobbying 
until I get enough votes to carry the dance — 
and I believe the majority is really in favor of a 
dance. It is so much classier.” 

The matter was hotly contested by the adher¬ 
ents of both opinions, and as February ap¬ 
proached the noon hour was given to lengthy and 
vigorous discussions. As all the girls ate their 
lunches in the gymnasium during the winter 
when it was necessary to stay indoors, the Fresh¬ 
man and Middle-class girls were as familiar as 
the Senior girls with all the arguments pro and 
con, and most of them sided with one party or* 
the other. 

During January Lutie Kent, the Senior girl 
who had taken charge of Mardee on the night of 



204 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the reception to the new students, started a move¬ 
ment to buy a piano for the school. Lutie was 
the sort of girl who always seeks to keep in the 
limelight, and she was usually successful in her 
efforts. There was already a piano in the ground- 
floor study hall which was used to accompany 
the hymns during chapel exercises, but Lutie 
claimed that another was needed downstairs in 
the gymnasium to play for the marches and calis- 
thenic drills. 

She pointed out that “if we had one we could 
dance at the noon hour when we had finished 
eating”, and she assured the girls that Miss 
Hazelhurst was very anxious for them to buy it. 
Miss Hazelhurst combined the duties of assistant 
to the principal and physical director of the 
girls. 

“If every girl in the school will pay an equal 
share of the cost, we can buy a good piano with¬ 
out having to contribute very much apiece,” she 
said, and carried around a petition to be signed 
by every girl who wanted the piano. 

When she brought the paper to Mardee, Mar- 
dee, said, “I don’t want the piano especially, 
Lutie, but if everybody else seems to want it, I 
am willing to pay my share.” 

“All right. Put your name down, then, so I’ll 
know I can count on you,” said Lutie. 

Mardee signed her name, and so did the rest of 
the S-B-double-M’s, but that afternoon when 
they compared notes they found that every one 
of them had put her name on Lutie’s petition for 
the same reason. 


MORE POLITICS 


205 


“I suppose most of the girls in the school felt 
the same way,” said Sally. “We don’t really 
need another piano. As far as dancing is con¬ 
cerned, we could dance to the music of a phono¬ 
graph just as well, and we could buy a second¬ 
hand phonograph for little or nothing.” 

“Let’s try to find out how many of the girls 
put their names down for the same reason we 
did,” suggested Mardee. 

“Nobody would like to do that all alone, but if 
we S-B-double-M’s start a movement together, I 
believe we can get a list nearly as long as 
Lutie’s.” Marilyn was the author of this view. 
She was back in school again by that time. 

The S-B-double-M’s were the ringleaders in 
the opposition which developed the next day. 
They carried a paper around to be signed by 
those girls who were not in favor of buying a 
piano but had put their names on Lutie’s list to 
keep from seeming disagreeable, and as Marilyn 
had prophesied, the list represented a majority 
of the girls in the school. 

Lutie was indignant with their interference. 

“All these girls ought to have expressed them¬ 
selves in the first place,” she averred. “Miss 
Hazelhurst wants this piano, and your signa¬ 
tures on my petition amount to a promise to 
pay.” 

“If Miss Hazelhurst regards them in that way, 
of course we will stick to our bargain,” said 
Sally, “but I am going to have a first-hand un¬ 
derstanding with Miss Hazelhurst about it,” and 
off she marched to the principal’s office. 


206 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


* 4 Come on, Hard,” she called back over her 
shoulder, and Mardee accompanied her to hold 
up her hands, so to speak. 

Miss Hazelhurst was very young and very 
pretty and very jolly and still enough of a girl 
in her point of view to be a great favorite with 
the students of both sexes. She understood 
Sally’s and Mardee’s contention immediately and 
assured them that the piano was not a pet proj¬ 
ect of hers. 

In reply to Sally’s suggestion of a second-hand 
phonograph she exclaimed, “Why, I shall be glad 
to lend the school a phonograph! And then 
everybody can dance. Nobody will have to play 
the piano.” 

And so the subject of a piano was dropped, but 
Lutie Kent, having failed to win a coveted emi¬ 
nence, looked upon Mardee and Sally Cox as 
officious meddlers. 

Lutie was strongly in favor of having the 
Senior party on St. Valentine’s day, and held 
forth, as was her wont, with dictatorial insistence 
in season and out. 

“I am in favor of letting Miss Hazelhurst de¬ 
cide it,” said one of the other Seniors at the 
lunch hour one day. “She has always been a 
good friend to the Senior class and we are count¬ 
ing on her to help us give the party. I, for one, 
am willing to abide by her decision.” 

“You might send Sally Cox and Mardee G-ray 
to talk it over with Miss Hazelhurst. They seem 
to have influence in that quarter,” suggested 
Lutie spitefully. 


MORE POLITICS 


207 


The matter was settled, however, at 
meeting of the class, and to Mardee’s 
tion the majority was in favor of a 
Washington Ball at the Armory. 


a called 
satisfac- 
Martha 


CHAPTER XVII 


THE PLAY 

February held another red-letter day besides 
Washington’s Birthday for Mardee. Early in 
February Miss Rhinebeck presented her play. It 
was a take-off on Shakespeare brought up to the 
minute. There were four characters: Juliet set¬ 
tled down and married to Romeo, Lady Macbeth 
leading a humdrum everyday life, Portia as plain 
Mrs. Bassanio, and Ophelia after several years 
of marriage to Hamlet. All were typical modern 
women with the identities of their famous proto- 
types, and the action took place at a summer 
hotel where they were supposed to have met. 

Marilyn was Portia, and Mardee was Ophelia 
and called her husband “Ham.” She was one of 
those foolish, trusting little wives who talk about 
their husbands all the time and have no opinions 
except such as they have gleaned from their 
smarter spouses. She was forever quoting Ham¬ 
let and began nearly every remark with “Ham 
sa-ays—” in a slow drawl. 

The performance 'was at night, in the lower 
study hall, which was admirably adapted to the 
purpose, and Miss Rhinebeck and her whole Eng¬ 
lish division had devoted themselves to making 
the mechanical part of the production a success. 


THE PLAY 


209 


Enough chairs and tables and rugs and curtains 
and potted plants had been offered to furnish a 
real hotel and the effect of those accepted was 
very lifelike and real. 

“As for costumes/’ Miss Rhinebeck had said, 
“anything you choose to wear will do. Modern 
fashions for matron and maid are indistinguish¬ 
able anyway. Wear summer dresses and hats 
you can use again off the stage.’’ 

“Oh, Mother, mayn’t I get my spring hat 
early?” Mardee had begged. “I have to get a 
hat this summer, anyway, and with a new hat my 
organdie party dress can be freshened up enough 
to look quite well.” 

Mrs. Gray had consented and a day or two 
later she and Mardee spent the afternoon select¬ 
ing a new bonnet. The spring fashions were es¬ 
pecially lovely that season, for it was a flower 
year, and there was not a hat in the stores that 
Mardee could not put on and look well in with 
her fresh clear color and fluffy hair. Mrs. Gray 
enjoyed trying them on her as much as Mardee 
did herself, and the milliners welcomed a cus¬ 
tomer who could give their handiwork so effec¬ 
tive a setting. 

“She ought to have this hat,” they would say. 
“It looks as if it were made for her.” 

“This hat was one of our favorites back in the 
workroom,” said one saleswoman. “I don’t 
bring it out when any homely old woman comes 
in who couldn’t set it off. But isn’t it sweet on 
the young lady?” 

“I’d like to sell you that hat,” said another, 


210 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“not only for the money, but because it gives me 
so much pleasure to look at you in it.” 

And Mardee smiled at her reflection in their 
mirrors and went from store to store, for when 
one can have but a single summer chapeau it be¬ 
hooves one to be certain that no prettier hat could 
he found. Finally she fell in love with a certain 
ravishing creation and knew that she had met 
her fate. It was pink — a luscious, soft, rosy 
pink — and the wide straw brim dropped down 
on either side of her face with exactly the droop 
of her soft, rosy lips and made a frame out of 
which her eyes softly smiled like two blue flowers. 
There were flowers on top,— blue, in a prim stiff 
row, as if some one had been very faithful with a 
watering pot in that garden. 

“This is the one I want,” she announced with 
certainty, caressing it with adoring fingers. 

Mrs. Gray looked at the price mark. It was 
expensive,— far more expensive than she felt she 
could afford. But she set it on Mardee’s head 
again, fluffed out the bobbed yellow hair under¬ 
neath, did some rapid mental calculations regard¬ 
ing the possibilities of doing without a new waist 
herself, and nodded to the clerk, saying, “I’ll 
take it.” 

“It will light up well in the play at night,” 
she gave as her contribution to Mardee’s rhap¬ 
sodies. “We can put fresh pink ribbons on your 
organdie to make it match, and I think Mrs. 
Hamlet will look well enough for the wife of even 
her distinguished husband.” 

But the fates were kinder yet to Mrs. Hamlet. 


THE PLAY 


211 


On the day Mardee bought her hat Mrs. Gray 
had a card from Aunt Harriet postmarked 
Tampa and saying: 

“We came here to spend a fortnight getting 
ready to go home. The shops are so perfectly 
lovely I couldn’t resist purchasing some things 
for your girls, which I shall send by parcel post. 
Will stop over with you on our way north for a 
day or two if possible.” 

“I hope it will be something I can use in the 
play,” said Mardee, but she had in mind some¬ 
thing like a bit of embroidery or dainty accessory 
for the dress and was wholly unprepared for the 
good luck that was in store for her. 

When the box came it contained two tailored 
linen dresses, a white one for Bab and a blue one 
for Mardee; Mardee’s was exactly the blue of her 
eyes and the flowers on her hat, with more flowers 
embroidered on it in a prim stiff row all around 
the skirt and on the collar and cuffs. 

“Oh, you lovely, lovely thing!” laughed Mar¬ 
dee from sheer rapture, pressing her cheek 
against the soft thick folds. 

“It will just be the most wonderful help,” 
sighed Mrs. Gray, gratefully reinstating her re¬ 
linquished waist in her own spring clothes budget. 

But when Mardee, dressed in the exquisite blue 
linen and pink hat, came down the narrow stairs 
from her bedroom the night of the play, slowly, 
setting each foot forth precisely as if calculating 
her effect, and glowing with color and sweet 
youth and the inner radiance of her excitement, 
Mrs. Gray’s breath caught in her throat and her 


212 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


eyes filled with the tears of a rapture deeper than 
Mardee’s own. 

The girls had rehearsed and rehearsed the play 
until Mar dee felt as if there weren’t any mean¬ 
ing left in her lines, and she confided to her 
mother and father and Bab, as,they left home to¬ 
gether for the high school, that she was so dread¬ 
fully excited and nervous she was afraid she 
couldn’t remember them. 

It was worse when she got to the building. 
There were two doors into the study hall, one on 
either side of the stage. One of them was in use 
as an entrance for the audience, and Mardee, 
coming in from the street, caught a glimpse of 
Don standing there taking tickets, and Branch 
and Ed acting as ushers and a great many people 
going in. The other was curtained off as a stage 
entrance, and the members of the cast, together 
with Miss Rhinebeck, waited in the principal’s 
office across the hall for the time to begin. It 
was a miserable fifteen minutes to Mardee. She 
broke out in a cold perspiration, dreading the mo¬ 
ment when she must walk out on the stage, and 
she pictured herself before the audience with her 
tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth, unable 
to say a word. 

When her cue came, she felt as though her legs 
and feet were made of lead, but when she stepped 
out into the glare of the footlights, and the 
brightness so blinded her eyes that she could see 
no one in the audience but Tom Adair and Cliff 
Nash beaming at her from the dim illumination 
of the front row, and the whole big dark room 



An usher came across from the door with a big hunch 
of pink roses. Page 213. 













































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213 


THE PLAY 

burst into a welcome of applause — all for her 
girlish beauty! — why, then her excitement 
turned into exhilaration. She could feel the color 
surge up into her cheeks. She did not feel like 
herself at all. It seemed as if somebody else were 
going to do the talking for her, and she was not 
a bit afraid. 

She flung herself into the part with an abandon 
she had never felt at rehearsals. She began to 
see new meanings in her lines. She even found 
herself putting a lisp into her foolish little “Ham 
sa-ays—” she had not put there before. Every 
time she said it there was a ripple of laughter 
over the house and even the other girls on the 
stage were taken by surprise. She felt the at¬ 
mosphere of appreciation and did it better and 
better. It was no credit to Mardee that her part 
was a funny one, but she did not miss any of its 
possibilities, and every time she opened her 
mouth it was a signal for the audience to laugh. 

At the end the whole cast was called out before 
the curtain together, and each had a curtain call 
of her own. Marilyn had again given evidence 
of real histrionic talent. But the hit of the eve¬ 
ning was Mardee. Her part, as it developed at 
the last moment, was the best vehicle for expres¬ 
sion of the four, and her inner radiance of spirit 
had proved a magnet which drew the hearts of 
her audience. Her curtain call was the last of 
the four, and when she came out to the footlights 
it seemed that the clapping would never stop. 

While she was bowing and smiling and back¬ 
ing off to one side an usher came across from the 


214 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


door with a big bunch of pink roses and threw 
them up on the stage. 

Here was a new problem! For a moment 
Mardee stood looking at them where they had 
fallen and wondering what on earth to do. And 
then a little voice within her whispered, i ‘Act as 
you feel”; and she laughed aloud and ran and 
gathered them up in her arms and kissed them. 
No star of a dozen theatrical seasons could have 
done a prettier piece of acting, for it came spon¬ 
taneously from her heart, and her audience 
clapped harder than ever and laughed with her. 

After the play the friends of the girls who had 
taken part gathered around them to compliment 
and congratulate them. 

Bab was the first one to reach Mardee’s side. 

“I didn’t know you had it in you, Mardee. 
But a streak of genius in a family is likely to 
crop out almost anywhere,” she said com¬ 
placently. 

Her mother whispered, “You did really well, 
dear,” and her father repeated his favorite com¬ 
pliment of: 

“Goodness me! 

I never did see 
Such a pretty girlee 
As my Mardee! ’ ’ 

“Give me one of the roses from your bouquet 
to remind me always of how you looked when you 
ran and picked them up,” begged Tom. 

“Why didn’t you tell us you could do it, you 
little actress!” demanded Cliff. 


THE PLAY 


215 


Sally declared, “Yon have found your voca¬ 
tion, Mard. You must go on the stage and gather 
in bouquets with pretty smiles. ,, 

“I’ll always remember you as you looked to¬ 
night,’ ’ whispered Marilyn, and Mardee replied 
with a squeeze of her hand: 

“That’s sweet of you, Marilyn. I never saw 
you look lovelier yourself.” 

Don proposed nine ’rahs for the cast, and 
again nine ’rahs for Mardee Gray, and as many 
of the boys and girls as could pressed around to 
add their felicitations. 

Mardee, looking back, felt as if Mardee Ant 
had made her last stand in the week before the 
play. Mardee Ant had waxed strong during the 
quiet winter days of books and school affairs. 
To-night the new plaudits, the tributes, the 
praises, were music to Mardee Grasshopper’s 
ears. They made Mardee Ant’s tamer pleasures 
seem stale, flat, and unprofitable in comparison, 
and poor Mardee Ant seem a dull creature beside 
her more brilliant sister. 

That night was a turning point in Mardee 
Grasshopper’s career. Mardee had looked so 
lovely in the play that people began to comment 
on her beauty. Very often the reputation of be¬ 
ing a beauty brings a woman more admiration 
than actual fairness of face, and Mardee began 
to notice from that time a tendency among her 
friends to accept her claims to homage as estab¬ 
lished. It was very intoxicating to find herself 
so admired. Adulation can get to be the breath 
of life and the need of it so compelling that the 


216 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


distinction between appreciation and flatter 7 be¬ 
comes a matter of no moment. Mardee, however, 
was unconscious of this danger and basked hap¬ 
pily in the sunshine of approval that suddenly 
burst upon her. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE 

Mardee went home from the play hugging the 
beautiful bouquet of pink roses but still too much 
excited to feel any curiosity as to their source. 

Bab’s inquiry, “Who sent the posies, Sis?” 
first reminded her that she did not know. 

“There wasn’t any card,” she answered. 

“Maybe there is one tied to the flowers some¬ 
where,” suggested Bab. 

Mardee spread the stems apart, and there, sure 
enough, down inside the bunch was a little en¬ 
velope addressed to “Mardee Gray, High 
School”, and when she took out the enclosed card 
she read in Marilyn’s handwriting: 

“I hope you will do best of us all to-night. 
With love, Marilyn.” 

“Look, Mother and Dad,” she said, holding it 
out for their inspection. 

“That was a kind, generous act,” said Mrs. 
Gray warmly. Her severe judgment of Marilyn 
made her all the better able to appreciate how 
the feeling must rankle in her ambitious heart 
that another girl looked prettier,— particularly a 
co-star in a theatrical performance. 

“I think Marilyn has repaid me for running 


218 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


back on the trestle to warn her,” opined Mardee. 

“Her act was fully as generous and probably 
cost considerably more effort,” Doctor Gray 
agreed. 

“I am going to see her the first thing in the 
morning and thank her for the flowers,” said 
Mardee and went to sleep in a rosy mist of pink 
hats, blue dresses, footlights, hand-clapping, com¬ 
pliments, and flowers. 

But to do her credit her dreams were not en¬ 
tirely selfish as she proved by her announcement 
the next morning at the breakfast table. 

“I have a great scheme for killing two birds 
with one stone,” she introduced the subject. 

“Who are the birds?” asked Bab. 

“I guess you’d say the birds were Marilyn and 
the Lawheads,” laughed Mardee. 

“That’s a whole flock of birds! Surely you 
don’t mean to kill them all!” teased her mother. 

“What kind of a stone are you going to use?” 
Bab inquired. 

Mardee sighed in pretended discouragement. 
“It isn’t possible to make this foolish family un¬ 
derstand anything without drawing a picture of 
it, ’ ’ she complained. ‘ ‘ But, really, I have thought 
of a fine plan. Mother, do you remember that you 
said what Marilyn needed was an absorbing 
interest?” 

Mrs. Gray replied that she did. 

“Marilyn enjoyed rehearsing for the play. 
She isn’t discontented and sarcastic when she is 
doing something that she likes, and she showed 
that she wasn’t really selfish by sending me those 


TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE 219 


beautiful flowers and saying that she hoped I 
would do better than any one else in the play — 
when you know what the play meant to her. You 
said that she would not worry so much about 
what other people were thinking of her if she 
thought more about other people. She was 
grateful to me for what I did that day at the 
trestle and that is why she sent the flowers. And 
she is grateful to the Lawheads, too. I know 
she would like to do something for them, because 
she said so. And Mrs. Lawhead said that she 
wished her girls could go to school and could get 
acquainted with some girls like us. Now don’t 
you see that it would be. good for both Marilyn 
and the Lawheads if she could help those girls 
to study? I am going to ask Marilyn if she 
doesn’t think we could go out there on Saturday 
afternoons and tutor Florry and Myrtle so they 
could be learning some lessons even if they are 
working in the factory. They have a half-holi¬ 
day on Saturdays.” 

Doctor Gray, who had been nodding and smil¬ 
ing at his wife as if at some happy secret they 
had between them, beamed at her warmly. 

“I am proud of you, Mardee,” he commended 
her. 

4 ‘That is a fine plan,” her mother agreed with 
her. 

“We could let them have our old school books 
and we could assign lessons they could be 
studying through the week. Do you think it 
would really work out?” she appealed to them 
eagerly. 


220 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“It will if Florry and Myrtle want to do it and 
if you girls have enough perseverance to stick to 
it,” replied her father. 

“And you will let me do it, then?” 

Mrs. Gray smiled, “Of course we will. We w r ill 
help you all we can. I was just thinking that if 
you did nothing hut read with them great works 
of literature it would be worth while.” 

“I wanted to try to teach them lessons in his¬ 
tory and arithmetic and physiology and all the 
things they would study if they re'ally went to 
school,” urged Mardee in a tone of disappoint¬ 
ment. 

“Of course you may do that if you would 
rather,”' Mrs. Gray assented and Doctor Gray 
added thoughtfully: 

“As their mother said, the association with 
people of different ideals will possibly make 
them more ambitious to learn — and ambition is 
all that is necessary. And the effort in their be¬ 
half can’t fail to benefit you and Marilyn.” 

Marilyn received the idea with enthusiasm. As 
it was Saturday she and Mardee went out to see 
Florry and Myrtle about it that same day. They 
telephoned to Mr. Stone’s store in the morning 
and asked Roscoe to let his sisters know that they 
were coming. 

“It’s a good thing you telephoned,” said Ros¬ 
coe. “They go to the movies every Saturday 
afternoon. But they would rather have you come 
to see them, I am sure.” 

“It will do ’em a sight more good to be study¬ 
ing here at home than running around to the 


TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE 221 


movies on Saturdays/ ’ declared Mrs. Lawhead, 
“and to have lessons to study at night will keep 
them out of mischief.’’ Mrs. Lawhead was not at 
home on that first day, hut when she heard about 
the plan she took this approving stand and gave 
it her hearty support. 

The two girls expressed themselves as being in 
favor of it, too, partly from pleasure in the so¬ 
ciety of two other girls near their own age, and 
partly from the faint stirring of that ambition 
which was theirs by inheritance; so after that 
every Saturday afternoon found Marilyn and 
Mardee in the little mountain cabin hearing 
Florry’s and Myrtle’s recitations, correcting 
papers, and explaining the contents of textbooks 
left over from their grammar school days. 

By the time the play was over, preparations 
were already well under way for the Martha 
Washington Ball. Lutie Kent was chairman of 
the committee on decorations and quite charac¬ 
teristically she had made such elaborate plans, 
with the reward in view of prominence for her¬ 
self as chief decorator, that her co-workers were 
busy at the Armory for two weeks beforehand. 
But the effect she obtained was well worth the 
effort. Every guest gave a gasp of admiration 
at first sight of the big assembly room on the 
night of the party. 

Mardee had the good fortune to obtain a pri¬ 
vate view the preceding week. Not on Lutie’s 
invitation. Far from it! Lutie had never ceased 
to regard Mardee’s share in the failure of her 
piano scheme as meddling, and considering the 


222 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


fact that Lutie was sure to regard her presence 
in the ballroom during the progress of its em¬ 
bellishment as an intrusion, Mardee thought the 
circumstances which led to her being there a good 
joke on Lutie. 

Miss Hazelhurst was helping the committee 
decorate. She had promised to go down to the 
Armory one day and discovered, just as she was 
leaving the high school building, that three dozen 
rolls of crepe paper which had been ordered from 
a stationer’s had been sent by mistake to the high 
school instead of to the Armory. 

School was out and nearly everybody had left 
the building. The paper was piled up on the 
steps just inside the front door and she knew that 
Lutie and her committee were anxiously awaiting 
its arrival at the Armory. While she stood look¬ 
ing at it in helpless uncertainty, Mardee Gray 
happened to come down the steps. She had 
stayed in that afternoon to rewrite for Miss 
Rhinebeck a theme which she had lost on her way 
to school that morning. 

“Mardee, are you going to be busy this after¬ 
noon? Are you in a hurry to get home?” ap¬ 
pealed Miss Hazelhurst. 

“Not at all,” Mardee assured her. 

“Well, would you mind helping me cart all 
this stuff down to the Armory?” 

“Not a bit. Pd love to. Just let me run over 
to Schmitty’s and telephone Mother what has be¬ 
come of me. 

“I am just crazy to see Lutie’s face when I 
come walking in with you, Miss Hazelhurst ” she 


TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE 223 


laughed when she returned from the bakery and 
took up her share of the pile of rolls. 

Miss Hazelhurst protested, “She can’t mind!” 
but Mardee laughed, “You don’t know Lutie! 

“But I wouldn’t miss going for anything,” she 
added. “I am crazy to explore that curious old 
building and I have never before had a chance 
to go down there in the daytime. ’ ’ 

She told Miss Hazelhurst Don’s story of the 
skeleton enclosed between the two thicknesses of 
the double wall and of the spooky tour of inves¬ 
tigation she and Don and Bab and Judie had 
made the night of the basketball game. 

“I have often wondered why the old place had 
so many walled-up windows and useless passages. 
Some time I want to go through it myself,” said 
Miss Hazelhurst. 

“It has been added to and rebuilt until it is a 
regular crazy quilt of rooms, and if I can get 
anybody to go with me I am going to try and see 
what it is like to-day,” declared Mardee. 

When they reached the Armory a surprise 
greeted Mardee’s eyes. Lutie had turned the big 
C. A. C. room on the top floor into a crepe-paper 
tent of red, white, and blue. Starting from the 
center of the ceiling and radiating in every direc¬ 
tion, twisted strips of red, white, and blue formed 
a canopy which completely hid the plaster over 
head, and the dirty walls were in the process of be¬ 
ing covered by a multitude of similar strips from 
floor to ceiling. 

“My goodness me!” exclaimed Mardee in the 
doorway. “What a lot of work!” 


224 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

“Don’t you think it’s pretty?” asked one of 
the girls who was pinning the strips to the base¬ 
board within hearing distance. The boys of the 
committee, on stepladders, were fastening them 
at the top. 

“It’s beautiful,” Mardee responded. “It 
makes this place look entirely different. Lutie, 
I think you’re a wonder to undertake anything 
so tremendous,” she added, seeking out Lutie to 
offer her congratulations. “I hope you don’t 
mind my coming in this afternoon. Miss Hazel- 
hurst asked me to help her bring down some tis¬ 
sue paper that had been sent to the high school 
by mistake. I never saw anything so elaborate 
in my life.” 

“Just don’t tell anybody what it’s like,” re¬ 
quested Lutie, mollified by Mardee’s apology and 
enthusiastic praise. “I want it to surprise peo¬ 
ple on the night of the twenty-second. ” 

“I won’t,” Mardee promised, and wandered 
off to inspect the curious features of the big 
room. Everybody was so busy that she did not 
like to ask any one to stop and explore the build¬ 
ing with her, and she felt timid about doing it 
alone. But the assembly room itself offered 
peculiarities enough. 

The floor at one end was on a higher level than 
at the other. Mardee wondered why this was so, 
and in idly speculating on the reason decided that 
most of the room must have been added at some 
time when a new wing was being built and that 
the higher part had formerly been a small room 
in the original building. There was a door open- 


TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE 225 

ing oil this higher end that aroused her curiosity, 
and upon opening it she found that it led into a 
long, narrow closet. 

4 ‘There isn’t any earthly need of a closet like 
this in such a room,” she thought. It was too 
small to hold much of anything and had neither 
shelves nor hooks. Mardee could only account 
for its existence by supposing that it had served 
a purpose in the old days before the rest of the 
room was built. 

The door of the closet was nearer one end than 
the other, and it was so dark inside that she could 
not see the far end of the narrow passage. Still 
idly curious, she felt her way along the wall until 
she had gone as far as she could, and then her 
hand touched something which felt like the 
panels of a wooden door. She felt around for a 
knob and soon found one, but it would not open 
the door, w T hich was evidently locked. She felt 
for a key but there was none. Then she ran her 
fingers along the edge of the door and presently 
she touched a bolt,— a plain old-fashioned bar 
with a knob to slide it. It was rusty and moved 
reluctantly but at last yielded with a jerk and 
the door swung inwards on its hinges, letting 
in a rush of cold outdoor air and the light of 
day. 

Mardee stared before her in amazement. 
There was a narrow staircase leading between 
two blind walls to an outside opening below. The 
narrow closet had evidently been a hall in the 
old days and this probably a staircase against an 
outside wall. She went down the steps, and at 


226 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the bottom she stopped for a hearty laugh all by 
herself. 

She was in the alley which she and Don and 
Bab and -Judie had entered in such trepidation 
on the night of the High-School-C. A. C. basket- 
ball game. 

“This is the very staircase we came up that 
night,’’ she thought, “and that is the very door 
we were so afraid to try for fear there might be 
a skeleton on the other side. Little did we know 
how near we were to the room the game was to 
be played in! We had to go all around Robin 
Hood’s barn to get back there by the front 
steps.” 

She went back up and rebolted the door. 
Lutie’s committee were all still busy and so pre¬ 
occupied with their own affairs that she did not 
stop them to ask if they had found the unex¬ 
pected door in the closet. And as the next day 
at school the board of editors of the high school 
annual issued a set of questions which aroused a 
storm of interest and discussion, Mardee never 
happened to mention her discovery at the Armory 
to any one. 

The questions when answered would amount to 
votes electing the most popular girl, the most 
popular boy, the best student, the best all-around 
athlete, and so forth, in the high school, the win¬ 
ners’ names to be published in the annual. They 
were printed on slips of paper, with blank 
spaces for the answers, and were to be signed 
and returned to the editors of “The Crow’s 
Foot”, which was the name of the souvenir 


TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE 227 

book issued each year by the retiring Seniors. 

There were thirty questions in all, but those 
which caused the most discussion besides the 
ones already mentioned were: 

Who is the prettiest girl! 

Who is the handsomest boy! 

Who is the ugliest boy! 

Who is the most attractive girl! 

Who is the wittiest girl! 

Who is the wittiest boy! 

Wlio is the most popular teacher! 

WIlo is the most unselfish girl! 

Who is the “best fellow” among the boys! 

Every one was comparing notes, offering argu¬ 
ments, and making conjectures as to the probable 
vote of the majority on each question, and until 
the great day of the Martha Washington Ball lit¬ 
tle else was talked of in the high school. 


CHAPTER XIX 


MANY A SLIP 

Mardee was to have a new dress for the Martha 
Washington Ball. The white organdie had done 
duty as an evening dress all winter and this was 
to he the biggest party of the school year. 

“Some of the girls are making Colonial cos¬ 
tumes/ ’ she told her mother. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Mrs. Gray 
had advised. “We couldn’t afford to spend 
much on a dress for only one occasion, and you 
will look better dressed in something nice that 
you can wear again than in a dress made of cheap 
material. You may wear my old-fashioned lace 
bertha and cameo brooch to give a Colonial air 
to your costume.” 

“You’re a corking sport! I’d ever so much 
rather do that! The powder and patches and a 
strip of black velvet around my neck will be Co¬ 
lonial enough,” Mardee had agreed, and the two 
had set about planning a new dress, the mother 
with as much zest as the daughter. 

Mrs. Gray had an old piece of white crepe de 
Chine put away in the “treasure drawer” in her 
chiffonier. It had been given to her for a present 
but did not contain enough yards to make a dress 
for herself. 


MANY A SLIP 


229 


“We’ll use this,” she said, unfolding the 
wrappings of blue tissue paper in which it had 
been put away, “and we’ll get Miss Parthenia 
Schmedley to make it up.” 

“Miss Parthenia Schmedley!” breathed Mar- 
dee, clasping her hands in a gesture of exalted 
adoration. Miss Parthenia Schmedley was a 
“real dressmaker” and this would be the first 
frock of so much sophistication Mardee had ever 
owned. 

Miss Parthenia, duly approached, took the 
crepe de Chine and pulled it through her bony 
fingers looking slantwise at it through the pince- 
nez teetering on her long nose the while she held 
it up against Mardee’s slim young person. 

“Um-m-m,” she soliloquized, “something sim¬ 
ple and girlish — not too low — a little close-fit¬ 
ting bodice — such youthful lines — most of the 
trimming on the skirt — very frilly over the hips 
— a rose at the girdle — nothing more — ah!” 
This last was a sigh of satisfaction with her 
eyes half-closed, for Miss Parthenia, if she were 
skinny and ugly, was an artist. “I will have it 
for you by the twenty-second.” 

Mardee went for two fittings, the last one on 
the twenty-first. The dress was still far from 
completed but Miss Parthenia assured her she 
need feel no anxiety. 

“I have been very busy, but I will send it to 
your house to-morrow,” she promised. 

“I don’t feel as if I could possibly wait twen¬ 
ty-four whole hours more,” sighed Mardee at the 
supper table that evening. “I wish to-morrow 


230 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


were not Saturday; Another day wouldn’t drag 
so.” 

But Saturday did not drag. The twenty-four 
hours passed so quickly — in fact, were crowded 
so full — that she wished there were more of 
them before the next night. For on the twenty- 
second Uncle Theodore and Aunt Harriet de¬ 
scended on them for the visit mentioned on Aunt 
Harriet’s post card, bringing with them Judie, 
who, being just Mardee’s age, of course could not 
be left at home when Mardee went to the dance. 

There was the storeroom to be transformed 
into a room for the girls again — dresses to be 
hung on the nails on the storeroom walls — 
clothes to be laid away in the drawers of the old 
dresser — a fresh towel to be spread on its 
cracked marble top and toilet articles to be set 
out before its broken mirror. There was the 
front room to be swept and garnished in honor 
of the coming guests, and there was Judie to be 
provided with an escort for the dance. 

It looked for a while as if Judie would remain 
unprovided for, and Mrs. Gray firmly insisted that 
if she were, Mardee must stay at home with her 
guest. 

“And miss the Martha Washington Ball?” de¬ 
manded Mardee in a crescendo of astonishment. 

“Unless you can take her with you.” 

“But, Mother, they are putting on all sorts of 
dog, and it’s to be a cotillion. There is just ex¬ 
actly an even number of boys and girls.” 

“Putting on what?” Mrs. Gray’s tone was a 
horrified reproach. 


MANY A SLIP 


231 


“See Seldom Fed prick up his ears. He 
thought you meant he was invited/’ chimed in 
Bab. She and Seldom Fed were curled up to¬ 
gether on the dining-room couch during this con¬ 
versation. 

Mardee had already held frantic converse over 
the ’phone with Tom Adair. 

“Dad has had a telegram from my uncle in 
Florida,” she informed him as soon as the mes¬ 
sage came, “and he and my aunt and cousin are 
coming to-day to visit us over Sunday. You 
remember my cousin, don’t you? Now what 
on earth am I going to do about the party to¬ 
night?” 

“Why, Friend Cousin will have to go, too. 
That’s easy. I remember her. What’s her 
name?” came from the other end of the line. 

“Judie. Judie Benick. But I don’t see that 
it is so easy. Whom will she go with? If it’s to 
be a cotillion she can’t go with you and me, and 
everybody has had a date for this dance for weeks. 
There won’t be anybody left to take her.” 

“The dickens! That’s so,” exploded Tom. 
“Why can’t your relatives give a fellow warning 
when they’re coming to visit you?” 

“I don’t know. But they didn’t. And they’ll 
be here this afternoon and Mother says I can’t go 
to the dance unless Judie goes, too.” 

“Something’s got to be done about it, but 
what— ” 

Mardee faltered, “I could stay at home myself 
and you could take her — ’ ’ 

“Now see here, Mardee! Did I invite any- 


232 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


body but you to go to the Senior party with me!” 

“No, but— ” 

“Hold on! I have an idea! Perhaps Prince 
Stanley can take her. Prince was going to take 
Lutie Kent, but Lutie’s father is dangerously ill 
and she’s not going if he doesn’t get better. It 
will give us an extra man if Lutie does have to 
drop out. I’ll ask Prince.” 

“Oh, splendid! I knew you’d fix it. You see 
Prince, and I’ll tell Judie she’s to go with him — ” 

“Better not. I haven’t seen him yet.” 

“Oh, Tom, I’m worried to death. Suppose he 
can’t? But you’ll surely be able to find some¬ 
body, won’t you?” 

“Oh, sure! We’ll go to the party.” 

The visitors did not arrive until supper time, 
and when they did Uncle Theodore and Aunt 
Harriet were shown into a spotlessly empty 
guest chamber and Judie was escorted to the 
storeroom. When supper was over and it was 
time to dress for the dance Mardee had not yet 
heard from Tom, but she took no news for good 
news and supposed that he had found somebody 
to take Judie. 

A real calamity had happened, however. The 
new dress had not come. Mardee had been too 
busy all day to inquire about it, and at supper 
time, when she tried to telephone Miss Parthenia, 
she could not get any answer. 

“I’ll just have to wear the old one,” she sighed. 
She took it down off its nail in the storeroom and 
patted it into shape. She felt like lying down on 
the bed and boo-hooing, but there was Judie to be 


MANY A SLIP 233 

pleasant to, and she was sensible enough to know 
that it would only get her eyes all red. 

‘‘I’ll have a good time, anyway,’’ she resolved, 
and took extra pains with her hair to make up for 
the dowdy old dress. She had planned to catch 
it up on top of her head in a net and powder it 
to give it a Colonial effect. But even her hair 
wouldn’t look right. The powder made it white 
enough, but it persisted in clinging to her head 
and looking hard and flat. She put it up and took 
it down three times in the flickering light from 
the two candles on the old dresser top, and finally 
gave up in discouragement. She would have let 
it hang as usual, except (that such a coiffure 
seemed entirely out of keeping with the velvet 
neck ribbon and court-plaster patches. And even 
the coquettish strip of black and the two patches 
on her face failed to fulfill Mardee’s expectation 
and bring a sparkle to her eyes. Judie, be-pow- 
dered and a-flutter with excitement, was dressing 
beside her in a lovely evening dress,— one of her 
mother’s purchases in Tampa. Mardee felt that 
her only comfort was that her cousin would be 
a credit to her. 

Just as they had finished dressing the door¬ 
bell rang. 

“That’s Tom, I suppose,” said Mardee. 

She and Judie gathered up their wraps and 
slipper bags and went through the closet into Mrs. 
Gray’s room and on downstairs. 

“Why, it’s Cliff!” cried Mardee in surprise, 
finding Cliff Nash standing waiting in the front 
hall. i ‘ Tom didn’t tell me you were going to take 


234 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

Judie. That’s perfectly splendid. Cliff, you re¬ 
member Judie, don’t you? Miss Renick, Mr. 
Nash.” 

“I am afraid you’ll say, ‘This is so sudden’,” 
giggled Judie, giving him her hand in her nerv¬ 
ous staccato manner. 

Cliff gulped and turned a questioning look on 
Mardee, but finding her occupied helping Judie 
with her coat, he rose nobly to the occasion and 
answered easily: 

“It certainly is a delightful surprise.” 

“You and Judie need not wait for Tom,” sug¬ 
gested Mardee. “He will surely be here in a 
minute and Judie already knows some of the girls 
down there.” 

They had hardly had time to get out of sight 
of the house before the doorbell rang again — 
furiously — and Tom dashed into the hall. 

“I don’t know what we’re going to do, Mar¬ 
dee,” he confided in a despairing whisper. 
“Prince Stanley can’t take her. Lutie Kent’s 
father got better” — this in a tone of disgust — 
“and I’ve seen nearly every boy in the Senior 
class but they all have dates.” 

“But I thought you sent Cliff!” exclaimed 
Mardee, in blank amazement. “She’s gone with 
him. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ Cliff Nash ? ’ ’ Tom might never have heard of 
such a person. 

“Yes — Cliff. He came in just a few minutes 
ago and I thought— ” 

“What had he done about Marilyn? Didn’t 
he tell you?” 


MANY A SLIP 


235 


“He dicing have time,” confessed Mardee rue¬ 
fully. ‘ 4 1 sent them off in such a hurry. I 
thought you had fixed it up for somebody else to 
take Marilyn because Cliff already knew Judie.” 

Suddenly, as the two stood looking at each 
other, the expression of perplexity on their faces 
melted to mirth and they both laughed until they 
cried. 

“Well, we should worry,” Tom slangily summed 
up the situation. 

While they were standing there holding their 
sides, the doorbell rang a third time. Mardee 
opened the door and a negro girl outside handed 
her a box with the words: 

“Miss ’Thenie Schmedley send dis.” 

“It’s my dress! It’s my dress!” Mardee 
fairly sang. “Tom, go into the parlor with the 
grown people while I put this on.” 

She slid open the double doors into the front 
room and presented Tom to her uncle and aunt, 
and then she raced upstairs on feet winged with 
joy. “Bab, come quick and help me!” she called 
out as she flew, and Bab and Seldom Fed tumbled 
over each other in a pell-mell dash in her wake. 

With trembling fingers she lighted the candles 
in the storeroom. She dropped her old organdie 
dress in a crumpled heap about her feet and let 
Bab, who had already opened Miss Parthenia’s 
box, pick it up off the floor. She scrambled into 
the new frock, a delectably alluring, softly cling¬ 
ing thing of beauty, and she and Bab in breath¬ 
less haste hooked it up together. It was molded 
to her tender young form in curves that caught 


236 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the radiance of the candles with a silken shimmer, 
—flat in front, frilly on the sides, with the half¬ 
shy, half-knowing air that a young girl’s dress 
ought to have. 

“Oh, Bab, if you bark at me like the old wo¬ 
man’s little dog I’ll say, ‘Lawk-a-mercy on me, 
it surely can’t be I!’ ” She gazed with dancing 
eyes, not at Bab, as she spoke, but at her own 
image in the broken mirror between the flickering 
candles. 

She made a grab at her hair net with both 
hands and let her powdered hair come tumbling 
down about her face. 

“It looked horrid. I feel as if I could do it 
better now,” she explained. 

With deft quick touches she put it up again. A 
pull here and a pat there, a fluff on this side and 
a tuck on that, worked the miracle she had de¬ 
sired. It was no longer flat and hard, but an elu¬ 
sive mesh of lights and shadows, of misty hol¬ 
lows and beckoning curls. A bright flush of hap¬ 
piness had crept up into her cheeks and painted 
them with an art many an older beauty would 
have envied. She turned away from the mirror 
a ravishing belle of colonial days. 

“Now I’ll do,” she announced. The whole 
process had not taken five minutes. “Isn’t it 
grand the dress came, Bab?” 

“Mardee, you look like a picture,” declared 
Bab with unaccustomed effusiveness. 

Doctor and Mrs. Gray and Uncle Theodore and 
Aunt Harriet greeted her appearance in the par¬ 
lor with exclamations of pleasure. 


MANY A SLIP 


237 


“It is Mistress Martha Custis herself,” were 
her mother’s words, hut the mist in her eyes told 
a story not hinted at in the laughing remark. 

“Your ladyship!” exclaimed her father with a 
courtly bow. 

“You look good enough to eat,” declared Uncle 
Theodore. 

Aunt Harriet, who was nearest her, put an arm 
around the slim waist in its smooth silken bodice 
and gave it a tight little squeeze. 

“That was for all young girls,” she smiled up at 
her niece, as if Mardee were the symbol of young 
girlhood itself. 

At the door of the ballroom Mardee and Tom 
met Clitf. 

“Cliff! Where is Marilyn?” asked Mardee in 
a tragic whisper. 

‘ ‘ That is just what I came to your home to tell 
you but you wouldn’t give me a chance. Her cold 
got worse and to-night she has a degree or two of 
fever and her mother wouldn’t let her come out. 
She telephoned me just at supper time, and I 
went by to tell you my hard-luck story. I 
thought I’d come with you and Tom.” 

“And you didn’t even know I had a guest?” 

“Hadn’t heard a word of it.” 

“I never thought of telephoning Cliff to-day,” 
Tom put in. “It was all settled he was to bring 
Marilyn.” 

“But I didn’t have to come alone, after all. 
And Judie’s a regular fellow.” 

“Oh, Cliff, how peachy of you! So you really 
were glad to bring her?” 


238 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“It wouldn’t make any difference if I weren’t, 
would it?” teased Cliff. 

“Not a bit,” admitted Mardee with a laugh. 
“Sure I was,” Cliff reassured her, relenting. 
“She’s there in the dressing room waiting for 
you. Go and get her so I can dance with her.” 


CHAPTER XX 


THE MARTHA WASHINGTON BALL 

There never was such a party. To Mardee it 
was Romance with a capital R and she was not 
Mardee Gray, but the Heroine of Romance watch¬ 
ing herself with Mardee Gray’s eyes. 

She had stepped into the character of a belle 
of “ye olden tyme.” All about her were other 
dames with powdered hair; the ballroom with its 
canopy of red, white, and blue was a fit setting 
for a rout General Washington might have at¬ 
tended ; the raised end of the room had been trans¬ 
formed by means of a lattice-work partition and 
swinging Japanese lanterns into a dimly-lit gar¬ 
den where belles and beaux might sit between the 
dances on rustic benches and sip lemonade at lit¬ 
tle rustic tables; there was no one who had not a 
smile of admiration or a whispered compliment 
for the shining-eyed ingenue who off the stage 
was Mardee Gray. 

“Mardee Gray, you’re the sweetest looking 
thing I’ve ever seen!” said one girl. 

“You look too beautiful to be human,” declared 
another. 

“That’s a perfectly darling dress.” 

‘ ‘ Mardee, if you don’t mind, I’m going to have 
a dress exactly like yours.” 

“I never saw you look so lovely.” 


240 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“You are a dream, Mardee!” 

Mardee’s progress across the floor of the dance 
hall was a triumphal procession strewn with ver¬ 
bal bouquets. 

Miss Hazelhurst had been to the theater to see 
“Monsieur Beaucaire” before she came to the 
ball and when she came in, Mardee, who happened 
to be near the door, inquired: 

“How was the play, Miss Hazelhurst?” 

“It was beautiful, my dear,” she replied — 
“like you.” 

Miss Herrington — bluff, cross, outspoken Miss 
Herrington — was sitting in one of the chaper¬ 
ones’ chairs in a line against the wall. 

“Come here,” she beckoned with her forefinger 
to Mardee halfway across the room. 

Mardee came skipping and leaned over with her 
hands on Miss Herrington’s knees. 

‘ 6 Do you know what you look like! ’ ’ whispered 
the crotchety old maid, her snappy gray eyes all 
crinkled with a smile. 

“No’m. What?” Mardee’s voice, too, was a 
whisper. 

i ‘ Like a great — big — Clothilde Soupert — 
rose!” 

The boys were just as enthusiastic. It was 
enough to turn anybody’s head. If poor little 
Mardee Ant had been able to survive the play, 
she would have * received a knock-out blow the 
night of the Martha Washington Ball. Mardee 
Grasshopper was in her glory. As the Heroine 
of Romance she laughed and chattered to the 
other characters of the story. They were not the 


MARTHA WASHINGTON BALL 241 

ordinary Tom, Dick and Harry of every-day life, 
but they, too, were figures of Romance, and the 
evening was a succession of scenes in which she 
played a part. 

There was the scene with the court beau at the 
top of the stairs in the hall. Not all the boys 
wore Colonial costume, but this one, by virtue of 
his silk knickerbockers and white stockings, had 
become a court beau. They had had a desperate 
quarrel because the Heroine of Romance wouldn’t 
promise him but one dance, and afterwards she 
had run away from another partner to sit out 
on the steps with him. 

Court Beau: I can’t understand you to-night. 

Heroine of Romance: It’s the effect of the 
powder and patches. 

Court Beau: It’s deeper than that. You are 
not Mardee at all, but some beauty of olden time 
come to life again. 

Heroine of Romance: I wasn’t going to tell 
you. 

Court Beau: But you couldn’t fool me, be¬ 
cause, don’t you remember, I was a courtier of 
the same period in that other incarnation? 

Heroine of Romance: Of course I knew! 

Court Beau: And I paid court to you then, 
so I must pay court to you now. 

Heroine of Romance: You don’t have to pay 
court to me now just because you did then. 

Court Beau : Oh, yes, I do! In every incarna¬ 
tion I am your true knight. In our next one I 
shall still be paying court to you, just as I am in 
this one. 


242 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


There was another scene, staged in the lantern- 
lighted garden, on a long low bench against the 
lattice fence, with a Gibson man in a dress suit. 

Gibson Man: I had been warned of this. 

Heroine of Romance: Warned of me! 

Gibson Man : Of what a flirt you were. 

Heroine of Romance: I shouldn’t like a girl 
who didn’t know how to flirt, should you ? 

Gibson Man : Not a bit. 

Heroine of Romance: So you really wouldn’t 
mind if I flirted with you, should you? 

Gibson Man : I should mind very much. 

Heroine of Romance : But you said you didn’t 
like a girl who couldn’t flirt. 

Gibson Man: You can flirt. And I like you. 
But you mustn’t flirt with me. 

And another one in the same garden, this time 
at one of the little tables, with the soft light trans¬ 
forming a very ordinary high school boy of yes¬ 
terday into an Adonis. 

Adonis: You are very cold, little Miss Mardee. 

Heroine of Romance: Cold? Why, no! Cliff 
(turning to man at next table), do you think it 
is cold? No, neither do I. Not at alj. 

Adonis: You know I didn’t mean that. But 
you might have given me more dances. 

Heroine of Romance : But this is the eleventh, 
and you had the first and fifth. How many more 
did you want? 

Adonis: The second, and third, and fourth, 
and sixth, and seventh, and eighth, and twelfth, 
and thirteenth — 

Oh, Mardee had such a good time that night! 


MARTHA WASHINGTON BALL 243 


Everything conspired to warm her heart and 
aronse within her a glow of satisfaction. Even 
Branch St. John, who, the sworn knight of Mar- 
dee Ant, was not usually a courtier in the train 
of Queen Mardee Grasshopper, sat out a long in¬ 
termission with her between dances and sang 
praises of her efforts in behalf of the Lawhead 
girls. 

“Say, it’s great of you to give up your Satur¬ 
days and go out there to help Roscoe’s sisters the 
way you are doing. There’s not another girl I 
know who would do it. I always said you were 
different from other girls.’ ’ 

Mardee accepted this compliment seriously. 
Somehow Branch’s compliments were different 
from the other boys’. They were seriously given 
and so sincere that not to accept them in the spirit 
in which they were given seemed silly and empty- 
headed. 

“I am glad I can do something for the Law- 
heads, now that I know how fine they all are and 
appreciate the struggle Roscoe is having,” she 
said. “Do you know, Branch, now that I under¬ 
stand better how Roscoe feels, it makes me so 
ashamed of the way I disappointed him that 
first night I met him at Miss Rhinebeck’s 
party!” 

“You said Mardee Ant would make up for Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper’s thoughtlessness, and you’ve 
certainly kept your promise. If you’ve done all 
this because of hurting Roscoe’s feelings that 
night I’ll say it was a good thing for Roscoe you 
hurt them. I could kick myself when I think of 


244 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the way I laid you out that night. You have more 
than kept your promise.’ ’ 

“Pm not doing any more than Marilyn is,” 
Mardee reminded him. 

“Well, you are the one that put it into Marilyn’s 
head. You are ‘ different V 9 insisted Branch. 
“And then it doesn’t matter so much to me 
whether Marilyn is or not. I am not Marilyn’s 
belted knight. ’ ’ 

Mardee parted from him aglow with generous 
feelings and high purpose. That was always the 
effect Branch St. John had upon her. He was in 
truth Mardee Ant’s knight. But she had the very 
next dance with Tom Adair, and before they had 
fox-trotted halfway around the room she was 
answering his whispered flattery with the coquetry 
of Mardee Grasshopper. 

“Mardee, you’re the kitten’s ears to-night.” 

“Oh, Tom, you’re trying to kid me.” 

“Honest, I’ll tell the world, you’re the canary 
bird’s teeth.” 

Sally added her note to the chorus of praise 
in characteristic style. “M, y a t b o t b to¬ 
night,” she said mysteriously, when they hap¬ 
pened to be sitting side by side in an intermission. 

“What does all that mean?” asked the boy with 
Mardee. 

“No telling. It just saves Sally’s valuable time 
to use only the first letters in her words,” Mar- 
dee explained. “The rest of us have to spend all 
our time figuring out what she means.” 

“I was just telling Mardee what she is to¬ 
night,” averred Sally. 


MARTHA WASHINGTON BALL 245 


‘ ‘ She ’s the belle of the ball, all right, whatever 
you said besides/’ declared Mar dee’s partner. 

“That’s what t b o t b means,” replied Sally. 

Mardee did not forget to see to Judie’s pleasure, 
but Judie was not a burden to her hostess. Her 
liveliness and eager, if somewhat shrill, enjoyment 
of new surroundings made her always the center 
of a delighted group. 

Doctor Gray leniently forgot to come for them 
at half-past ten. He did not arrive until after 
eleven, and then Judie and Mardee lay awake half 
the rest of the night exchanging confidences and 
rehearsing the events of the wonderful Senior 
party. Mrs. Gray, with exactly that eventuality 
in mind, had put Bab on a cot in her own room. 

Bab made an interested audience the next morn¬ 
ing, before w T hom the whole story could be re¬ 
peated. And the day being Sunday, there were 
twenty-five or thirty callers upon the three girls 
combined with whom the ball could be discussed 
and rediscussed until as a subject of conversation 
it was torn to tatters. Judie and Mardee received 
congratulations upon their social triumph of the 
night before until even their strong young ap¬ 
petites for compliments were satisfied and the 
flavor of the flattery somewhat dulled to their 
palates. 

When the next morning Judie’s mother and 
father departed on their way Ohioward, their 
daughter had to be torn lamenting from the arms 
of Channingsburg, and called out from the dis¬ 
appearing automobile that she would live only for 
the day when she might come back again. 


246 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Mardee laughed as she waved her hand and 
turned away feeling sorry for Judie because she 
wasn’t Mardee. 

The Martha Washington Ball served to em¬ 
phasize the effect of the play upon the relations 
between Mardee Grasshopper and Mardee Ant. 
Mardee Grasshopper had acquired a taste for ad¬ 
miration and compliments and public favor. She 
enjoyed her position as a new constellation in the 
firmament of beauty so much that it overshadowed 
all of Mardee Ant’s simpler enjoyments. 

For she was a new star. It was not only the 
boys and girls who commented upon how pretty 
she was. Other mothers told Mrs. Gray that her 
daughter was developing into a lovely girl. 
Other fathers told Doctor Gray that his little girl 
was growing up to be a beauty. Strangers on 
the street turned to look a second time as she 
passed laughing and talking with her friends, her 
cheeks aglow, her eyes shining, her whole per¬ 
sonality flashing with the joy of youth and health. 
Her popularity increased and her parents looked 
on with anxious eyes and dreaded lest her sweet¬ 
ness be utterly spoiled. 

As for Mardee, she had no time any more to sit 
on one foot in the rocking chair by the dining¬ 
room stove with an orange and a volume of 
Dickens or Thackeray. She was much sought 
after for school-girl-and-boy frolics. On after¬ 
noons when she was at home she was more likely 
to be found out on the front steps with a group 
of four, five, or six other young folks, one of the 
boys “showing off” perhaps, and the others 


MARTHA WASHINGTON BALL 247 


hilariously applauding. She saw less of the S-B- 
double-M’s than she had before, because they 
were all Freshman girls and Hardee’s vogue had 
spread into the upper classes. She was still fond 
of them, but they were, except Marilyn, a little 
afraid of the belle she was getting to be, and if 
the truth must be told, they were associated in 
Mardee’s mind with bygone, less glittering days, 
and the inconspicuous career of Mardee Ant. 
Mardee Ant she held in a sort of fond, pitying 
contempt. She and Marilyn continued to tutor 
the Lawhead girls, however. No engagement was 
ever allowed to interfere with the Saturday after¬ 
noon expedition to Crow’s Nest Mountain. 

And fortunately for Mardee Grasshopper the 
long studious days of winter counted for some¬ 
thing. She had done her school work well and 
was thoroughly familiar with the subjects that 
came up for the winter term examinations in 
March. The time she had wasted during the last 
days of February and first of March was so little 
in proportion to the time she had improved that 
even a very careless preparation for the final 
questions on the term’s work did not prevent her 
from coming through the examinations with fly¬ 
ing colors. 

Branch St. John and Roscoe Lawhead were 
still her close rivals, and all three got marks well 
up in the nineties, but Branch had been absent for 
two weeks in the middle of the term and the ef¬ 
fect on his class grades showed in his averages, 
and Roscoe was having all he could do as the school 
work demanded greater concentration to keep up 


248 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


with that and his clerking out of school hours. 
Mardee really had an advantage which she failed 
to make the most of. 

She knew she had been neglecting her studies 
and felt decidedly uneasy about her standing on 
the teachers’ books. Physics she had especially 
on her conscience, for that had always been her 
bugbear, and the day after the physics “exams” 
she was passing Professor McKie’s door when he 
opened it and came out into the hall. 

“Please, Professor McKie, what did I get in 
physics?” she burst out, oblivious of the presence 
of a crowd of students in the hall. 

“Guess,” smiled Professor McKie. 

“I’m afraid to. Eighty-five?” 

1 ‘ Plus ten. ’ ’ 

“Goody, goody!” squealed Mardee, and exe¬ 
cuted a little toe dance to the amusement of her 
audience. 

“Got your rivals whipped, Miss Mardee?” 
asked a boy whom she knew only slightly. 

“My rivals?” asked Mardee in pretended in¬ 
nocence. 

“You needn’t think I don’t know a race when I 
see it,” he retorted, and his words brought to 
Mardee a shock of surprise,— the Mardee Ant who 
had resolved so short a while before to win the 
Davis medal already seemed so far away and un¬ 
real. 


CHAPTER XXI 


SPRING 

As the spring advanced Mardee Grasshopper 
grew stronger and stronger. Everything in earth 
and sky conspired against Mardee Ant. Just out¬ 
side Mardee’s bedroom window, so near that she 
could have touched it with her hand from the 
porch roof, waved the pointed tip of a young 
tulip poplar tree. It was yellow-green now and 
held high in a cup of leaves a tulip in full bloom. 
Every day the first thing Mardee saw when she 
opened her eyes in the morning was the nodding 
top of her flower-crowned neighbor against a blue, 
blue sky, and the breeze in its dancing leaves 
whispered: 

“Shut up your books. Come and play with 
me.” 

It played hide-and-seek in her sash curtains, 
getting behind them to billow them out into the 
room and then retreating suddenly and letting 
them fall with a slap. And as if the invitation 
of the breeze were not enough, a fat-breasted 
robin had to come and perch on her pet poplar 
tree, arguing with her in a throaty contralto that 
the sunshine was warm and dew-moistened dust 
lay on the roadways under the trees. 

“What does he say, BaM” Mardee asked one 


250 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


day as lie sat earnestly gazing at them, his head 
on one side and his heady eyes fixed and severe. 

“He says, ‘ Tweet, tweet’,” answered unimagi¬ 
native Bab, with a yawn. 

Mardee denied it. “He does not. He says, 
‘Look out of this window if you dare. Mardee 
Ant, get up and shove your bed ’way, ’way back 
in the corner and cover your eyes, if you expect 
to get any studying done to-day.’ ” 

All day the conspirators kept up their assaults 
on her resolution. Everywhere windows were 
open and the sound of voices and smell of warm 
earth came in from outside. The noisy back-yard 
hens kept up a busy cackling that told of golden 
warmth and sheltered nooks to be explored. And 
in school, when she tried to recite, a clatter and 
rush and honking in the street below claimed her 
attention through the open windows. 

In the afternoons there was no time for study. 
Chattering bunches of boys and girls gathered on 
the sunny front steps as soon as school was over— 
bareheaded boys and girls in gay new dresses — 
and strolled home together slowly under the arch¬ 
ways of new leaves that dappled the sidewalks 
with flickering light and shade and filtered the sun¬ 
shine with a green magic. 

She never came home alone. There were al¬ 
ways from two or three to a half-dozen boys and 
girls with her, who sat down on the stone steps 
leading up to the yard or in the swing on the porch. 
Some days Mardee would be on another girl’s 
front steps. 

Sometimes one member of the crowd would sug- 


SPRING 


251 


gest an ice-cream soda and they would all stroll 
off again and take some corner drug store by 
storm. And sometimes an automobile already 
more or less tilled with boys and girls would draw 
up at the curb and the whole crowd would pile in 
as best they could, sitting, standing, hanging on 
the running board, and go tearing through the city 
streets and out over the country roads, singing, 
shouting, laughing, carrying hubbub wherever 
they went, but usually evoking smiles and tender 
memories of springs when other hearts were 
young. These boys were only youngsters and had 
not cars of their own, but they were occasionally 
allowed to borrow their parents’ cars, and a few 
of them, and of the girls, too, had cars practically 
at their disposal most of the time. 

Doctor and Mrs. Gray would not let Mardee be 
on the street all the time nor go away from home 
every day, and she regarded it as a hardship that 
she was so much more strictly brought up than 
most of her friends, but even when she was at 
home there was some one with her so much of the 
time that not much was accomplished by her stay¬ 
ing there. 

In short, Mardee was on the way to becoming 
as nearly perfect a specimen of the genus grass¬ 
hopper as exists. 

Doctor Gray observed the transformation so¬ 
berly. 

“ ‘Getting spring into your bones’ doesn’t ac¬ 
count for the whole trouble,” he said in answer 
to Mardee’s self-defense. “If Mardee Ant were 
so dead to God’s big outdoors that she didn’t get 


252 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the spring into her bones, I’d like to shake her un¬ 
til those dry bones rattled. If Mardee Ant could 
not ask herself with all her heart and soul, ‘And 
what is so rare as a day in June?’ then she 
wouldn’t be Mardee Ant.” 

He repeated the whole passage from Sir Launfal 
with a fervor and tenderness that held his little 
audience enthralled: 

“ ‘And what is so rare as a day in June? 

Then, if ever, come perfect days, 

Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 

And over it softly her warm ear lays; 

Whether we look or whether we listen, 

We hear life murmur, we see it glisten; 

Every clod feels a stir of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 

And, groping blindly above it for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 

The flush of life may well be seen 
Thrilling back over hills and valleys; 

The cowslip startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, 

And there’s never a leaf nor a blade too mean 
To be some happy creature’s palace; 

The little bird sits at his door in the sun, 

Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 

And lets his illumined being o’errun — 

With the deluge of summer it receives; 

His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 

And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings; 
He sings to the wide world and she to her nest — 

In the nice ear of nature which song is the best?’ 

“Mardee Grasshopper doesn’t feel that. Other 
things appeal to her — dresses, and parties, and 


SPRING 


253 


compliments. And pretty soon Mardee Grass¬ 
hopper will lose the power to feel at all. She will 
just live on excitement as long as the sunshine 
lasts and then she will get to be a dry skeleton 
whose bones would rattle if you shook them.” 

All this was on one of the study nights. The 
little audience was made up of Bab and Mardee 
and Mrs. Gray gathered around the dining-room 
table. Mardee still studied her lessons by the 
evening lamp, but her thoughts, as her father had 
guessed, were preoccupied. The lesson was just a 
lesson. She had lost Mardee Ant’s keen desire to 
explore new continents of the mind, and her at¬ 
tention was distracted by the sounds and smells 
from outdoors. These spring nights were as bad 
as the days. When the moonlight lay like a silver 
sheet on the bit of a lawn around the house, and 
the odor of honeysuckle and chinaberries was a 
magical perfume drugging the sense of duty, Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper was little to be blamed if her 
thoughts were off listening for familiar voices and 
sounds of gaiety outside the realm of her books. 

“Whoo — oo, oo-oo, oo-oo!” came a yodel from 
outside on one such night when she should have 
been immersed in algebra. 

‘ < There are the girls! ’ ’ cried Mardee, the equa¬ 
tion of x and y flying out of the window, so far 
as her scattered wits were concerned. 

‘‘ Mar — dee — ee! ” the call was repeated. 

“Coming!” sang Mardee. 

On the front steps she found Sally and Begorry. 

“Oh, we’ve just had a peachy idea!” they 
greeted her, taking the words out of each other’s 


254 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


months. 4 4 Let’s have a picnic Saturday — the S-B- 
double-M’s act as hostesses and invite some of 
the other Freshmen girls and get Miss Hazelhurst 
to chaperone!” 

44 Oh, rippinM” cried Mardee ecstatically. 

44 We’re going around to see Gibs about it to¬ 
night. We can invite the others to-morrow at 
school.” 

4 4 When can we arrange about the lunches — 
what each shall take, and all of that?” asked Mar¬ 
dee, for already it was Thursday. 

4 4 We can talk it over at recess and put them up 
to-morrow afternoon,” replied Sally. 

4 4 Of course we S-B-double-M’s will put up ours 
together,” added Begorrv. 

44 No — I’ll tell you what,” amended Mardee. 

44 Well all spend the night in our storeroom to¬ 
morrow night, and put up our lunches before we 
start Saturday morning.’ ’ 

Marilyn, when notified, was as enthusiastic as 
Mardee, and the plan to spend the night in Mar- 
dee’s storeroom met with unanimous approval. 
Miss Hazelhurst and all the other Freshman girls 
invited eagerly accepted, too. 

Friday night was a sort of a reunion to the S- 
B-double-M’s, for though the little club had never 
ceased to consider itself an organization, circum¬ 
stances had lately prevented the old intimacy be¬ 
tween the four girls. Sally was at her wildest 
and rattled off initials at a rate which made it 
impossible for the others to translate half her 
remarks. Begorry was in true Irish form and 
talked in the broadest of brogues. And Marilyn 


SPRING 


255 


and Mardee added their giggles to the general 
commotion until Doctor Gray had to come to the 
closet door and demand order for the sake of some 
sleep for the household. 

When at six o ’clock Saturday morning the four 
awoke and looked out of the storeroom window 
the shadows lay long in the backyard and the dew 
was sparkling on the grass. 

“Faith, and it’s a foine lot of lazy-bones ye 
be!” scolded Begorry, dragging the pillows off 
the bed to belabor the others soundly. “How 
manny toimes must I till ye to git up and dr-r-riss 
and go to mar-r-rkit ? ’ 9 

The plan had included an early-morning trip to 
the market house to buy the supplies for the lunch. 

The stores downtown at that hour were just 
opening up, and the city streets wore the cool look 
of early morning on what is going to be a hot day. 
The vegetables, freshly watered in the stalls in 
the market house, looked wet with dew, and the 
concrete walks, newly sprinkled with wet sawdust 
and swept, had a clean smell. 

“I intend never to shop at any other hour of 
the day,” declared Mardee, reveling in the fresh¬ 
ness and coolness. 

“Me nayther,” Begorry agreed. 

They bought bright red cherries and spring 
radishes and onions and tomatoes for sandwiches, 
and before it got hot they had packed their lunch 
boxes and met the rest of the party. 

“I know a bank whereon the wild thyme 
grows,’ ’ caroled Sally. 

They had set out for a bank whereon, if not the 


2 56 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


wild thyme, at any rate the sweetest of pink 
honeysuckle grew, filling the air with its spicy 
fragrance. Overhead the breezes whispered in 
the branches of the willows, and before them, 
murmuring past the stone piers of a bridge, lay 
the clear river, rippling and sparkling in the 
morning sunshine like a million diamonds. On 
either bank the trees hung over like fluffy rolls of 
green, casting cool shadows upon the surface of 
the water and placid green images deep into its 
heart. And beyond the river were the hills, the 
near ones green to match the water, the far ones 
blue to match the sky. 

“I’ll say this is as perfect as anything could 
be when you’ve an ant down your back and a lock 
of hair that won’t stay out of your eyes unless 
you turn your back to the wind — and the view, ’ ’ 
said Sally. “The grass is green and the trees are 
green and the water’s green and the hills are green. 
Everything I can see is green except my hair. ’ ’ 

“And the general effect you produce is green, 
too, so it doesn’t matter if the hair is a shade 
off,” Begorry assured her. 

Sally flung out a retaliatory arm and Begorry’s 
hat, a little mouse-colored mushroom of soft felt, 
went rolling down, down, down, with a frantic 
train in pursuit, until it skipped lightly over a 
projecting root and landed upon the water. 

“Brave firemen, save my child!” besought Be¬ 
gorry, beating her breast. 

4 1 It looks more like your kitten than your child, ’ ’ 
laughed Marilyn. ‘ ‘ Kitty, kitty, kitty! ’ ’ she called 
coaxingly, making passes with a long stick at the 


SPRING 257 

little wet furry thing bobbing up and down on the 
river. 

“ ’Rah, ’rah, ’rah, 

See my hat, 

Chic-a-lac-a, chic-a-lac-a, 

Maltese cat!” 

Mardee paraphrased one of the high school yells. 
Sally sat on the bank and sang: 

“My bonnet flies over the ocean, 

My bonnet flies over the sea,” 

in a mournful tenor while a half-dozen fishermen 
angled for the truant chapeau, and wrung her 
hands with such tragic earnestness over: 

*‘ Bring back! 

Bring back! 

Oh, bring back my bonnet to me — ee — ee!” 

that the others laughed until they had to throw 
their arms around the trees to keep from slipping 
into the water. 

When at last the little hat was captured on the 
end of a stick and Begorry had hung it up on a 
willow tree to dry, Sally changed her tune to: 

“I’ll hang my hat on a weeping willow tree.” 

“Oh, girls, look up here,” called Miss Hazel- 
hurst. She was standing at the top of the bluff 
with her arms full of azaleas. “There is laurel 
on the side of this cliff, and arbutus all over the 
ground, too,” she told them. 


258 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


‘ t Isn ’t this the most heavenly spot ?’ ’ demanded 
one voice. 

1 ‘And the most perfect day?” asked another. 

“It seems too good to be true,” added some one 
else. 

All morning they climbed np and down, gath¬ 
ering flowers. When the snn got so hot that their 
hair clung to their damp brows they took off their 
hats and lay down to look up at the sky through the 
interlacing branches of the trees, and swung out 
over the river on a grapevine swing. 

“It acts like a fan,” said Marilyn, throwing 
back her head to enjoy the breeze as she clung to 
the twisted ropes of vine. 

They ate their lunch on the top of a bluff with 
the winding river stretching away between the 
hills on either side. 

“Just imagine lunch inside of four walls again 
after this,” sighed Miss Hazelhurst. 

“The poor little ants and spiders will miss us,” 
wailed Sally sympathetically. 

“Just imagine ever leaving here at all,” ex¬ 
claimed Mardee, throwing her head back against 
a tree and stretching out her arms as if to em¬ 
brace the beauty of the spring. 

But when half-past two o’clock came Mardee 
and Marilyn put on their hats and bade the others 
good-by. 

“It is time to go out to St. Elmo and hear 
Florry and Myrtle Lawhead say their lessons,” 
Marilyn explained. 

“Couldn’t you let it go just this once?” tempted 
Miss Hazelhurst. “It’s too bad to miss all this.” 


SPRING 259 

“You don , t play hooky from us,” laughed Mar- 
dee in reply. 

But the walk to the car line was another joy 
on that day of flooding sunshine and twittering 
birds. They followed wandering cowpaths 
through daisy-starred pastures and unfamiliar 
streets between backyard gardens, and at the 
Lawheads’ they sat on the porch overlooking the 
panorama of river and hills from the mountain 
side. 

Marilyn had gained from these classes at the 
Lawheads’ one of the finest lessons life can teach. 
She had learned the joy of service and received 
the reward of self-forgetfulness. The discovery 
that she might be of use to Florry and Myrtle had 
revealed to her vistas of similar chances to help 
on every side. The grateful friendliness with 
which her advances were met surprised her. It 
was such a pleasure to know that people were 
thinking kind thoughts about her deeds that she 
ceased to care so much as she had what they 
thought about her looks. And, of course, when 
she stopped giving thought to her complexion, 
other people did, too. It is funny what a point¬ 
ing signpost self-consciousness is. When she had 
ceased to repel people with her sensitive sarcasm 
she made friends right and left. 

In fact, the good work which Mardee had be¬ 
gun reacted with more benefit on Marilyn than on 
Mardee, for Marilyn was not assailed by Mardee’s 
enemies. The incipient vanity that lurks in every 
girl’s heart was not fed in her case as it was in 
Mardee ’s, and no glittering snare of popular favor 


260 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


was laid for her feet as it was for Mar dee’s. And 
by an unjust sort of justice Marilyn got more 
credit for her acts of generosity than Mardee did 
for hers. Marilyn appeared to have less to gain 
by them. A girl who is popular suffers from the 
involuntary resentment in the heart of possible 
rivals. Other people subconsciously feel that 
she might have done her good deeds to gain favor, 
or from the effervescent overflow of her cup of 
happiness. A girl who is not such a favorite has 
not this secret envy to overcome. Her generous 
acts win a willing admiration. 

Marilyn’s new disinterestedness was the more 
conspicuous because it showed such a change of 
heart. Perhaps the fact that she was her fash¬ 
ionable mother’s daughter made it seem the more 
remarkable. People commented upon it in her 
case as they might not have in any one else’s, and 
her name was the one most frequently suggested 
in answer to “The Crow’s Foot” editor’s ques¬ 
tion, “Who is the most unselfish girl?” 

When the annual came out, Marilyn had re¬ 
ceived the vote for the most unselfish. She was 
radiantly happy over it. It changed the face of 
the whole world for her, and Mardee was as happy 
for her as Marilyn was for herself. 

“You were right, Mother,” she rejoiced at 
home. “You said that all she needed was some¬ 
thing to take her mind off herself. She has for¬ 
gotten all about her thick skin, and she’s a differ¬ 
ent girl!” 

Mardee had her own reasons for congratulation 
over the result of the voting in “The Crow’s 


SPRING 


261 


Foot.” She was voted the prettiest girl in the 
high school, and the most popular. And while 
Mardee Ant might have been generous enough 
to be glad that a friend had reaped the reward of 
her own unselfishness, Mardee Grasshopper valued 
the distinctions she had won so much more highly 
that she did not care who got the vote for the most 
unselfish. 


CHAPTER XXII 


BASEBALL 

The outstanding feature of the spring to all 
high school students was, of course, baseball. 
Spring and the baseball season are to schoolboys 
synonymous. 

The boys practiced on the playground surround¬ 
ing the school building, but they held their games 
at Columbia Park. Both Tom Adair and Cliff 
Nash were on the team. Cliff was the catcher and 
Tom had always played in the outfield, but he 
was ambitious to pitch and this year material for 
good pitchers was so scarce that Professor McKie, 
the coach, had tried him out in the pitcher’s box 
at the practice games. 

The really responsible position on the team was 
that of manager. It was held by Prince Stanley, 
who belonged to a little set which had taken Mar- 
dee in. Columbia Park had to be rented, and as 
the gate receipts were a matter of uncertainty 
until after the games were over, the manager had 
to furnish a guarantee that the rent would be paid. 

“We ought to have a fund on hand to draw 
from,” urged Prince, and Professor McKie sup¬ 
ported him in his contention and gave it a formal 
presentation before the student body. This was 
his first year on the high school faculty, and as 


BASEBALL 


263 


coach and faculty supervisor of athletics he had 
arranged a more ambitious schedule of games 
than the high school had ever undertaken before. 

“The uniforms and equipment ought to be pro¬ 
vided for when the season opens,’ ’ he pointed out, 
“and a certain amount of ready money is always 
necessary for trips when we go away from home 
to play. Can’t you boys and girls think of some 
way for establishing a permanent athletic fund 
before another year?” 

He made this appeal during the chapel exer¬ 
cises one morning early in the spring term, and 
later in the same week the presidents of the three 
classes called a joint meeting to discuss ways and 
means of financing athletics. Professor McKie 
attended to hold up Prince Stanley’s hands, and 
a spirit of ardent enthusiasm pervaded the gath¬ 
ering. 

A committee was appointed to solicit subscrip¬ 
tions for the current season and a plan was formed 
for raising an athletic fund by means of a June 
Jubilee. The June Jubilee was to be a sort of 
carnival held in the assembly room at the Armory 
the first day of June. The girls were to have 
booths and sell candy and flowers and pennants 
and ice-cream, and there were to be side shows in 
tents, a merry-go-round and sliding board, a cir¬ 
cus performance in the afternoon, and a vaude¬ 
ville show at night, all by high school talent. 
Tickets were to be sold for admission at the door 
and a separate sum charged for the side shows, 
the merry-go-round and slide, and the articles sold 
in the booths. 


264 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 

“And I’ll tell you what will make us a lot of 
money,” proposed Prince. Boys and girls had 
been popping up all over the room with such a 
wealth of suggestions for side shows and circus 
and vaudeville stunts that the harassed chairman 
had had all he could do to preserve order. “We 
can elect a queen of the June Jubilee. We can 
erect a throne on the stage at the Armory and let 
it be vacant in the afternoon and crown a queen 
to sit there, surrounded by maids of honor, dur¬ 
ing the evening performance. We can charge five 
cents a vote and crown the girl who has the most 
votes by six o’clock on June first. There won’t 
be any expense hut the cost of printing the votes, 
and if we can get that done right away we can sell 
votes for two months.” 

“Fine!” 

“Bully for you!” 

“I’ll tell the world, old Prince has a head on his 
shoulders! ’ ’ 

“Hurrah for the queen of the June Jubilee!” 

Prince’s idea received a warm welcome, and in 
fact turned out to be the best money-making 
scheme suggested. 

He had a number of coupons printed with a 
blank to hold the name of the queen, and these 
the committee in charge were very arduous in 
selling, but nobody had any idea at first of the 
scope the contest for queen was to assume. 

Early in the season the boys and girls s im ply 
wrote on the vote they had bought the name of 
a random choice for queen and dropped the slip 
of paper into the box prepared to receive them 


BASEBALL 


265 


under the bulletin board in the lower hall. Every 
day the committee counted the votes and pinned 
to the bulletin board a list of the names voted for. 
Every popular girl in the high school received 
some votes, and many girls outside got a few. 
There were dozens of candidates. Each day 
added new names to the list. 

But each day added a few more votes to the 
totals of a few girls who were general favorites. 
Mardee’s name was on the list from the first and 
never a day went by that she did not pile up more 
votes. In the first list posted, of only a dozen or 
so names, Mardee Gray had six votes. The next 
day she had twenty, the next sixty-three, and so 
it went. After a while it became evident that the 
race was narrowing down to nine or ten candi¬ 
dates. A few stragglers were added to the list 
from time to time, but as interest centered in the 
progress of those who were farthest ahead the 
names of those having only a few votes were 
dropped from the list. 

Meanwhile nickels began to pour into the coffers 
of the committee in charge of the queen contest, 
and the astute managers of the June Jubilee had 
their eyes opened to the possibilities of such an 
election. They went down into their pockets for 
three dollars’ or five dollars’ worth of votes to 
swell the total of one candidate with a loyal back¬ 
ing, whereupon the backers of the others saw that 
they were left in the rear, and the next day an¬ 
other candidate was boosted with the same bene¬ 
ficial effect upon the treasury. 

But whoever was temporarily in the lead, Mar- 


206 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


dee always made safe and steady gains. It was 
evident that there was a strong force determined 
to set her on the throne. 

Before long it was Mardee Gray against the 
field. The knots of curious-minded about the 
bulletin board each morning asked each other: 

“How has Mardee Gray come on since yester¬ 
day?” 

“Has Miriam Howell kept up with her?” 

“Is she ahead of Caro Thorne again?” 

“Has Bertha May dropped out yet?” 

Every few days some candidate who had fallen 
conspicuously behind was dropped from the list, 
but never Mardee. A few other names remained 
as steadily on the list and made as constant gains, 
but it was plain' that the friends who had started 
Mardee ’s boom were using every means in their 
power to keep her in the forefront. 

“The S-B-double-M’s are going to elect you 
queen, Mardee,” Marilyn told her. “We have 
pledged ourselves not to spend a nickel on ice¬ 
cream or candy or cinnamon buns or picture shows 
until the June Jubilee is over. We will # save all 
our spending money to buy votes with. ’ 9 

“Branch St. John and Ed McKie and I have 
started a movement to make you the Freshman 
class candidate,” said Don Willis. 

“Some of the fellows are organizing a Mardee 
Gray club and I’m your self-appointed campaign 
manager,” announced Tom Adair. 

Mardee found it very exciting to be hailed as 
queen by half the people she met. To have some 
one swearing undying allegiance to her every day 


BASEBALL 


267 


or so was a new and agreeable experience, and the 
consciousness that all her friends were meeting 
together to sing her praises and make comparisons 
favorable to her with the rival candidates did not 
tend to correct any tendency she might have 
toward vanity. None of it was conducive to con¬ 
centration on her studies, either. If any one had 
desired to develop Mardee Grasshopper’s quali¬ 
ties at the expense of Mardee Ant’s, he could not 
have chosen a better way. 

The baseball games at Columbia Park were to 
Mardee a series of soirees and the grand stand 
a salon where she could receive the greetings of 
her loyal supporters. She hardly knew whether 
she liked baseball best for this, or for the game, 
or for the soft air and warm sunshine and buzzing 
crowds of excited boys and girls in pretty spring 
clothes. 

The first important series of games was with 
Lakemont, the prep school Channingsburg High 
had defeated in football the preceding fall, and in 
the Lakemont games Tom Adair was given a 
chance to show what he could do as a pitcher. 
Tom pitched brilliantly at times, but inconsist¬ 
ently. He was excitable, and both Professor 
McKie and his team-mates, feared that he might 
lose his head in a closely contested game. There 
were two other pitchers on the team who were 
regarded as steadier,— Jake Gettys and Mart 
Leary. In the three games with Lakemont Tom 
was to pitch on Thursday in the first game, Jake 
on Friday, and Mart on Saturday. And Thurs¬ 
day afternoon Tom did just exactly what every- 


268 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


body feared he would do: he lost his head com¬ 
pletely when a lucky strike put the visitors ahead 
and pitched so wildly that Professor McKie would 
have taken him out of the box and used one of his 
other men if he had not thought it better to keep 
them fresh for the two- succeeding games. 

The score at the finish was seven, to one for 
Lakemont. Tom felt the disgrace of it keenly. 
He knew that the boys, were laying their defeat at 
his door, and he avoided his friends. Mardee, 
watching him from the grand stand as the crowd 
began to disperse, saw him going off towards the 
gate alone. 

‘ 4 Poor Tom, , ’ she thought ; 4 * he needs a friend . 9 9 

She borrowed a pencil from some one nearby 
and tearing the margin off a handbill lying on 
one of the seats, wrote on it: 

“Come up in the grand stand. I want to see 
you. M. G. ’’ 

She asked an urchin who had been selling pea¬ 
nuts and was passing by with’ his empty tray 
if he knew Tom Adair when he saw him. 

“Huh-uh,” replied the youngster, shaking his 
head. 

“He was the pitcher. Do you think you could 
find the pitcher and give him this note f ’ 9 

Her small messenger departed, inquired of a 
Lakemont player he met in the field “which guy 
was de pitcher”, and handed the note to the 
pitcher of the wrong team. Mardee saw him 
pointing her out to a perfect stranger, apparently, 
and saw the Lakemont pitcher make his way 
toward the grand stand. 


BASEBALL 


269 


“Why, hello!” exclaimed the stranger, when 
he reached her side. “If it isn’t my little football 
friend!’ ’ 

“Philip Bolling!” gasped Mardee, in a tone 
which made him wonder why she had sent the note, 
for plainly she was as astonished as he. She ex¬ 
plained the mistake to him, and as by that time 
Tom had disappeared, Philip begged to be allowed 
to join her party going back to town. He walked 
home from the car line with her. 

“We sure put one over on you to-day/’ he 
bragged. “We got even with you for last fall.” 

“You are not even, yet. We have two more 
games to play,” Mardee reminded him. 

“Oh, pshaw! You have to win two to get the 
best two out of three and we only one. You can 
never do it in this world,” he exulted. “Poor 
Channingsburg! ” he commiserated her mischie¬ 
vously, shaking his head with pretended sorrow. 

“Poor Lakemont!” echoed Mardee, equally 
sympathetic, and from that moment they main¬ 
tained a pretense of feeling sorry for each other. 
Philip spent all his spare time at Mardee’s house, 
and during the games, kept up a rapid fire of sig¬ 
nals from the Lakemont players’ bench to the 
grand stand. If a Lakemont player got a hit off 
the Channingsburg pitcher, Philip would hop up 
off his seat to hide his weeping eyes in a handker¬ 
chief where Mardee could see him and then peep 
out over the top with a teasing grin. 

Or, “Poor Channingsburg!” he would say, his 
lips forming the words and his expression indicat¬ 
ing sympathetic grief. 


270 MARDEE GRAY S CHOICE 


Mardee would shake her fist and make faces at 
him, and when Channingshurg High was winning 
she would weep in her turn and signal “Poor 
Lakemont!’ 9 

Channingshurg took the second game with a 
score of five to three. Jake Gettys pitched. Mart 
Leary was to pitch the third, but on Saturday 
morning he broke his arm cranking an automobile 
and there were only two pitchers left,— Tom 
Adair, who had lost the first game, and Jake 
Gettys, who could hardly be expected to pitch two 
days in succession. It began to look as if Lake¬ 
mont would get even, after all. 

Philip dropped in as soon as he heard the news 
to offer Mardee his sympathy. 

“I don’t suppose you will care to go out to the 
game at all this afternoon?” he teased. 

“Indeed I will! I wouldn’t miss a chance to 
say, 4 1 told you so’, for anything,” Mardee came 
back at him. 

She went out to the game with the other S-B- 
double-M’s and Begorry’s mother. 

Jake Gettys pitched the first four innings. In 
the first inning Lakemont scored one run, and Mar¬ 
dee saw Philip Bolling wipe an imaginary tear out 
of his eye and wink at her. But for the next two 
Jake managed to shut them out, and in the last 
half of the third Channingshurg scored two. The 
grand stand was on its feet, the cheer leaders were 
dancing like wild Indians, and the band — Ed 
McKie’s aggregation — could hardly be heard 
above the rooting. Mardee, catching Philip Boll¬ 
ing’s eye, buried her face in her hands. 


BASEBALL 


271 


But in the first half of the fourth, Jake pitched 
three balls before the umpire called one strike, and 
allowed Lakemont to fill up the bases and score a 
run for every hit. The visitors scored four in 
that one inning. It put them three ahead of the 
home team. It was plain that Jake’s arm was 
giving out. He could be seen in earnest confab 
with Professor McKie when he returned to the 
players’ bench, and then Tom Adair trotted out 
and began to warm up, throwing balls to one of the 
subs. 

“Oh, goody! They’re going to give Tom an¬ 
other chance!” exclaimed Mardee. She had not 
seen Tom since the day of his humiliation. ‘ ‘ Let’s 
give a yell for him to let him know we still feel 
confidence in him. Perhaps it will help him to 
play better. ’ ’ 

The S-B-double-M’s started a yell for Tom, 
and he turned with a smile that showed all his 
teeth and threw his cap into the air. The whole 
grand stand joined in to encourage him, and when 
he stepped into the box at the first of the next 
inning, his pitching showed that he was master of 
himself and intended to make up for his fiasco of 
Thursday. He pitched better than Jake had the 
day before; he pitched better than either Jake or 
Mart had ever pitched. In fact, he pitched a no-hit 
game. 

But when the last inning came, the score still 
stood five to two in Lakemont’s favor. Cliff was 
the first batter up. He knocked a single and 
landed on first amid wild applause from the grand 
stand. Prince Stanley followed and sacrificed 


272 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


to put Cliff on second. The next three men made 
first and second and struck out, respectively, and 
Tom Adair followed on the batting list. He came 
up with the bases full and two men out,— and a 
final score of five to two against his team if he 
failed to do anything for them. Many a better 
man has lost his head in less disquieting circum¬ 
stances. Pandemonium had already broken loose 
in the grand stand and when Cliff went to third 
and second and first bases were filled. The S-B- 
double-M’s had left their seats and were standing 
down at the front, holding to the wire netting. 

“We’re for you, Tom. We know you can do 
it,” called Mardee in sober earnest, as Tom got 
up and started to take his place. 

“All right — thanks!” Tom flung back over his 
shoulder as he picked up a bat. 

And he swung at the first ball Lakemont’s 
pitcher sent him, hit it such a crack that it sounded 
as if the wood of his bat must have split, and sent 
it like a cannon ball straight over the head of the 
short stop, between left and center field, and over 
the fence for a home run. 

The rooters fairly split their throats as one 
after another four men crossed the plate for Chan- 
ningsburg. 

“High School, 

Rah! Rah! 

High School, 

Rah! Rah! 

Hurrah! Hurrah! 

Channingsburg! Channingsburg! 

Rah! Rah! Rah!” 


BASEBALL 


273 


they called, and: 

‘ ‘ Pitcher, 

Rah! Rah! 

Pitcher, 

Rah! Rah! 

Hurrah! Hurrah! 

Tom Adair! Tom Adair! 

Rah! Rah! Rah!’ * 

“Tom’s won his own game!” yelled the crowd, 
and the boys poured off the bleachers and lifted 
him on their shoulders. He struggled to get down 
but his laughing captors held him. As he passed 
the grand stand his head was almost on a level 
with Mardee. 

‘ ‘ I am so glad, Tom! ’’ she congratulated him. 

“I never could have shown my face again if 
I hadn’t done it,” he answered. “You’d have 
lost your campaign manager, Queen Mardee.” 

As Mardee was leaving the park, Philip Bolling 
came up to shake hands and bid her good-by. 

‘ ‘ I am going into mourning, ’ ’ he laughed. ‘ ‘ But 
I expect to take off my crape in the fall. Look out 
for Lakemont in the football season!” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 

Mardee continued to hold the premature title of 
queen of the June Jubilee among her friends and 
loyal adherents, and the voting continued to oc¬ 
cupy a conspicuous place in the activities of the 
high school. In fact, it grew more exciting day 
by day, and there was always an eager crowd 
around the bulletin board where the results were 
now posted two or three times daily. Mardee *s 
candidacy had received an invaluable aid in the 
support of the Freshman class as a unit under the 
enthusiastic leadership of Branch and Don, for 
the Freshman class was the largest in the school. 
Her position was still further strengthened by a 
generous sprinkling of upper-class supporters in 
the membership of Tom Adair’s Mardee Gray 
Club. If it had not been for a certain Caro Thorne 
among her rivals, Mardee’s supremacy would have 
been so easily assured as to take the interest out 
of the race. 

But Prince Stanley, with an eye to business, had 
introduced into the running the daughter of Mon¬ 
tague Thorne, the richest man in Channingsburg 
and a stockholder in almost every large enterprise 
in the city. Caro was a year or two older than 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 


275 


Mardee and a pupil at a fashionable private school 
patronized by a dozen or so of the wealthiest fami¬ 
lies. She had a large enough following to put 
her well in the lead and to keep those aspiring 
to elect any one else putting up money. 

“See here, Prince/’ complained Tom, watching 
the returns go up on the bulletin board one morn¬ 
ing, “Mardee has seven hundred and forty-seven 
votes, Bertha May has four hundred and sixty- 
three, and your friend Caro Thorne has seven 
hundred and thirty-one. To-morrow she may be 
ahead of Mardee, because the high school vote is 
divided and for every two that go to Mardee one 
goes to somebody else.” 

“Well, I should worry,” answered Prince, with 
an indifferent shrug. “It is nothing to me who 
wins so long as the athletic fund continues to roll 
up this way. Why don’t you combine forces on 
one high school candidate and give Caro a run for 
her money?” 

“ Atta boy!” ejaculated Tom, slapping his thigh. 

It wasn’t long before Mardee was the candidate, 
not of the Freshman class alone, but of the whole 
high school. 

‘ ‘ The harder we can make it for old man Thorne 
to elect his daughter, the more money we will 
make for athletics,” was the argument by which 
Tom had converted the lukewarm. “It looks like 
Caro’s bunch of rich relatives mean to buy her 
what she wants, and Mardee is the strongest can¬ 
didate we can coalesce on, because she already has 
the Freshman class and the Mardee Gray Club 
behind her.” 


276 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


What Tom had said about Caro’s rich relatives 
was true. They were always willing to buy 
enough votes to keep Caro abreast with Mardee, 
and Mardee’s ardent backers carried the warfare 
into the downtown stores and offices of their own 
friends and relatives, ostensibly in the interest of 
high school athletics. 

They succeeded in stirring up so much interest 
in the election that the ChcDnningsburg Times 
posted the standing of the candidates every day 
on its bulletin board downtown, and after that 
Mardee felt that defeat was impossible to con¬ 
template. 

1i Oh, Marilyn, ’ ’ she shuddered, ‘ i think how hu¬ 
miliating it would be not to be elected now, when 
failure would be so public! And Caro must feel 
the same way!” 

“You sha’n’t be beaten,” promised Marilyn 
reassuringly. “Tom and Cliff and I talked it over 
and we persuaded Dad to give us fifty dollars’ 
worth of votes to put away and surprise Caro’s 
campaign managers with, at the last minute. Of 
course they will keep up until the end, but we’ll 
spring these votes when it is too late for them to 
catch up. ’ ’ 

“What a precious old darling Mr. Gibson is!” 
Mardee cried gratefully. 

“He said he wouldn’t have done it for athletics, 
but if it was to elect the pretty little girl who made 
such a hit with him at the houseparty on Crow’s 
Nest Mountain, he’d be glad to give it,” laughed 
Marilyn. ‘ ‘ So you see you have yourself to thank, 
Mardee. And I really suspect,” she added in a 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 277 

confidential whisper, “that what happened on the 
trestle had something to do with it.’ ’ 

“With Mr. Gibson’s fifty dollars’ worth salted 
down to surprise ’em with at about quarter to six 
on June first, we have your election cinched, old 
lady,” prophesied Tom jubilantly. Fifty dollars’ 
worth meant a thousand votes. “All we have to 
do now is to keep even with Caro’s crowd until 
the last minute and then walk in and grab the 
bacon. ’ ’ 

Keeping even, however, strained every resource 
they could muster. The fund for athletics was 
growing by leaps and bounds. One day Caro’s 
uncle, the owner of a spinning mill, would give 
ten dollars. The next day Mardee’s henchmen 
would scratch around and collect enough votes to 
get a majority again. Then Caro’s brother would 
fork up seven or eight dollars, and Don and 
Branch would carry their list into new fields. 
Thereupon Caro’s campaign fund would be aug¬ 
mented by some bank president who was her 
mother’s cousin, and the members of the Mardee 
Gray Club would resolve to go without something 
else and save the money to further their cause. 

* i I sold my bicycle and went without a new Sun¬ 
day hat for you, Mardee,” Don confessed rather 
pathetically. 

“No girl ever did have such friends as I have,” 
replied Mardee gratefully. 

“Mardee Gray 1208, Caro Thorne 1224,” the 
Times bulletin announced on May 28th. 

“Mardee’s behind. Thank goodness for our 
nest egg,” breathed the S-B-double-M’s. 


278 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“Mardee Gray 1256, Caro Thorne 1242/’ was 
the report on May 29th. 

“Hooray! Mardee’s ahead again!” cried a 
knot of her supporters. 

“Mardee Gray 1302, Caro Thome 1290/’ said 
the bulletin on May 30th. 

“Two days to go and Mardee well in the 
lead,” rejoiced the members of the Mardee Gray 
Club. 

“Mardee Gray 1357, Caro Thorne 1307,” was 
put up on May 31st. 

“Yip! Yip! We’ve got it cinched!” yelled 
Tom, throwing his cap in the air. 

“Everybody in town knows about the race,” 
thought Mardee to herself. To tell the “honest 
truth”, Mardee Grasshopper’s vain little heart 
was thrilled by that prominence. But — “I’ll 
simply die if I get beaten after all this.” The 
secret of Tom’s fifty-dollar nest egg was a com¬ 
forting thought to her. Even if Caro’s promoters 
succeeded in getting ahead now, their rivals con¬ 
gratulated themselves that they had a bomb to 
explode which would undermine the enemy’s de¬ 
fenses. 

On the day of the June Jubilee, Mardee was a 
waitress in the ice-cream booth. This was the 
largest of the booths; it was, in fact, a corner of 
the room railed off where girls in white aprons 
and caps served their patrons at small tables. 
The big room of the Armory was still decorated 
with the twisted strips of red, white, and blue that 
Lutie Kent and her committee had put up for the 
Martha Washington Ball. The paper lattice-work 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 


279 


partition before the raised end had been partially 
removed to make a stage for the vaudeville show 
of the evening, only the outer portions of it having 
been retained to conceal the dressing rooms cur¬ 
tained off for the performers. In the middle of 
the stage at the back was a platform topped with 
a throne gayly draped in red, white, and blue 
bunting. 

The whole scene was a gay one. The booths 
were decorated with flowers and ribbons and pen¬ 
nants, the merry-go-round and sliding board, bor¬ 
rowed from a grammar school playground, were 
centers of hilarious throngs, and the tents con¬ 
taining the side shows were bedecked with stream¬ 
ers and topknots and supplied with spielers adver¬ 
tising the attractions housed therein — a two- 
headed girl, the tallest man on earth, the fattest 
woman, and a wonderful calf whose tail was where 
his head ought to be — this last because he was 
tied with his back to a pail of milk. 

The circus, which took place between the tents 
and booths, was a three-ring affair, and posters 
hung about the walls set forth the accomplish¬ 
ments of the roller skating artists, the bicycle 
stars, the “family” of trick athletes, and the 
black-face comedian who would take part in the 
evening’s program. 

Mardee pictured herself crowned with flowers 
on the throne and surrounded by the S-B-double- 
M’s, whom she had planned to choose for her 
maids, whenever her eyes fell on the stage beyond 
the lattice partitions. The voting was still going 
on, and the crowd at the Jubilee was buying a good 


280 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


many more for Mardee than for Caro, because it 
was so largely a high school crowd. 

Tom whispered to her in passing, “ We’ll hardly 
need that fifty dollars’ worth now, we’re so far 
ahead. We’ll just put them in to swell the fund 
and give you a good majority.” 

As six o’clock approached Mardee’s heart was 
in her throat. There was to be an hour’s inter¬ 
mission between the afternoon and evening per¬ 
formances, when the participants could go home 
for supper. The polls were to close at the end of 
the afternoon so the votes could be counted be¬ 
fore the doors opened again. She could see the 
tension in the expression of the boys keeping the 
ballot box, and feel the excitement of the vote 
sellers circulating through the audience of the 
circus. Her tongue was dry and her hands felt 
clammy with perspiration. She tried to appear 
casual and unconcerned, but as a matter of fact 
her head ached so badly that before six o’clock 
she could stand it no longer and went home early 
for supper. 

She had just finished the meal and was sitting 
on the front porch in the cool shade of the vines, 
when Tom Adair and Branch St. John and Don 
Willis came down the street from the car line. A 
sorrier looking bunch she had never seen. She 
knew as soon as they came in sight what their 
news was. 

Mardee felt so sorry for them she forgot that 
their trouble was disappointment for her sake, and 
running to meet them at the porch steps, she held 
out her hands and cried: 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 281 

“Oh, I am so sorry, boys! I wish I could have 
won for you.” 

“You little peach!” responded Tom, wringing 
both her hands. “We are kicking ourselves that 
we didn’t win for you!” 

Branch apologized, “We were working against 
more serious odds, than we knew, but we did our 
best. I didn’t have much, but I gave what I had, 
and whoever is queen to-night, you are always our 
queen. ’ ’ 

“I couldn’t buy a thousand votes for you, Mar- 
dee,” bemoaned Don, “but I would have stolen 
them, honest Injun, if I could!” 

That made Mardee laugh and helped her over 
the beginning. 

It seemed by the boys’ account that Caro had 
finished nearly a thousand votes ahead. 

“They had a hundred dollars of Mr. Thorne’s 
money put away for the last. When we found our 
fifty wasn’t enough we went down into our pockets 
and added twenty more, but that was the best we 
could do,” they said. 

“And we thought we had better come and tell 
you,” finished Branch, “so you could stay at home 
if you would rather.” 

“I think it was just dear of you to do it,” Mar- 
dee thanked them, “but I don’t feel that way at all. 
I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of and I 
am not going to stay away to-night. I am glad 
you came and told me, though, because now I 
won’t have to worry about what to wear.” 

“That’s the spirit!” Don commended her 
heartily. 


282 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“You’re a dead game sport!” declared Tom. 

Mardee parted from them so gayly that the 
three went away with relief in their faces. 

She went down to the Armory with her mother 
and father and Bab in Doctor Gray’s car. They 
were not too sympathetic, but sought to take the 
whole matter as play and her defeat as a part of 
the game. Only Seldom Fed, seeming to catch 
some hint of his mistress’s mood, sat down dole¬ 
fully close to the wall and thumped his tail on the 
floor, his ears dragged down in the mournfullest 
fashion. 

At the door to the Armory she came face to 
face with Caro getting out of a limousine with her 
maids of honor. 

At first there was a shade of embarrassment on 
Caro’s face, but it disappeared when Mardee held 
out her hand and said with the friendliest frank¬ 
ness : 

“Caro, of course I wanted to be elected, but 
since I wasn’t I am glad for you that you were.” 

“What a darling thing to say!” cried Caro and 
gave her an impulsive kiss. 

Afterwards Mardee often thought of that mo¬ 
ment with the reflection that the old saying is 
true about an ill wind. For out of that exchange 
grew one of the sweetest friendships of her whole 
life. 

At the time, however, she whispered to her 
father, “There! I’m glad I’ve got that over.” 

“You said just the right thing, and in the sweet¬ 
est way,” Doctor Gray commended her. 

“There’s one more thing I dread,” sighed Mar- 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 283 

dee. “I have not thanked Marilyn’s father yet 
for his fifty dollars’ worth of votes, and I feel 
ashamed to face him now.” 

Her father patted her hand sympathetically. 

i ‘Never mind. You couldn’t help what hap¬ 
pened. Just say what you feel, and it will surely 
be all right.” 

But Mardee hesitated to approach Mr. Gibson 
when she saw him with Mrs.. Gibson and Rose¬ 
mary, talking to a number of their friends, and 
it cost her more of an effort than any of the by¬ 
standers knew to hold out her hand to him before 
so many people and say with her winning smile: 

“Mr. Gibson, I want to thank you. for buying 
all those votes for me.” 

“Look here, sweetheart,” replied Mr. Gibson 
heartily, putting an arm around her and drawing 
her into the midst of the group, “you didn’t tell 
me how many you needed. The thing I’m sorry 
about is that the girl I wanted for queen wasn’t 
elected. ’ ’ 

“We’re all disappointed for you, Mardee,” said 
Rosemary cordially, and Mrs. Gibson tactfully 
added: 

“I just wish there could be two queens.” 
Caro’s mother belonged to the same fashionable 
set that she did, and she was always careful not 
to say anything that might hurt any one’s feel¬ 
ings. 

Mardee had plenty of consolation in her defeat. 
The S-B-double-M’s all kissed her and whispered 
that she was their queen, anyway, and warm¬ 
hearted Begorry made a little wreath of daisies 


284 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


from the flower booth and broke down really cry¬ 
ing, when she put it on her head; Branch St. John 
stuck to her side with a mute loyalty which seemed 
to say, “Pm here if you need a friend.” Roscoe 
Lawhead came up to bid her good night and said, 
4 4 The only reason I came to-night was to see you 
crowned. If somebody else is to be queen I won’t 
stay.” Jake Gettys, who, as football captain for 
the coming year, crowned Caro, whispered to Mar- 
dee after the coronation, 4 4 1 hope she ’ll never know 
how I hated it — my votes all went for you.” 
Professor McKie told her, “You’re a trump to 
accept defeat like this.” And so many girls and 
boys flocked around the ice-cream booth to con¬ 
dole with her that she had more of a court than 
Caro. 

But Mardee’s heart was sore behind her brave 
smiles. She had seen Tom congratulating Caro 
and laughing and talking in the group that sur¬ 
rounded her,—- gay, debonair Tom, who loved sun¬ 
shine and happiness and was attracted by popu¬ 
larity and success as a bee to the flowers. And, 
after all, being the center of a crowd of consoling 
friends was not like really being the queen and sit¬ 
ting up on the throne at the back of the stage with 
a crown and scepter. When the lights were put 
out for the vaudeville show and everybody’s eyes 
were turned towards the stage she had to swallow 
hard to keep from crying and she saw the scenes 
through a blur. 

Before the evening was over Mardee had re¬ 
ceived far more enthusiastic plaudits from the 
crowd than Caro, but they belonged to Mardee 


285 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 

Ant and did not satisfy the cravings of poor little 
disappointed Mardee Grasshopper. 

The roller skaters and bicyclists had done their 
stunts and made their bows. The family of 
father, mother, son, and daughter in pink tights 
who were in private life members of the high 
school baseball team had held each other at arm’s 
length and stood on each other in pyramids. The 
negro minstrels had come on and taken their 
places in a semicircle. They were bandying their 
jokes from end man to end man, when somebody 
near the paper lattice partition struck a match 
to look at his watch and carelessly dropped it to 
the floor. 

He thought it was extinguished, but it wasn’t. 
It fell at the foot of one of the paper strips form¬ 
ing the lattice work. At any rate, that is in all 
probability what happened. It would take only 
a spark to ignite a thin strip of paper. The flimsy 
lattice work caught fire and the flames quickly ran 
up to the paper canopy covering the ceiling. 
Tongues of fire ran out along the strips over¬ 
head; they broke loose as they burned, and fell 
toward the floor, forming a curtain of fire that 
divided the audience from the stage and drove it 
back toward the entrance. 

There was a rush for the door. Chairs scraped, 
women screamed, girls sobbed, men called hoarse 
directions. Mardee, in the ice-cream booth at the 
back of the room, sat petrified with horror at the 
predicament of the queen and her maids on the 
stage. 

They were cut off from the rest of the room and 


286 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the flames were rapidly eating up the partition 
and threatening the canopy over their heads. All 
the girls were dressed in costumes of net that 
would catch from a spark as quickly as the tissue 
paper. They dared not run through the curtain 
of fire to the entrance and they knew of no escape 
from the rear. Professor McKie had had presence 
of mind enough at the first indication of danger to 
run to their side and seek to prevent them from 
losing their heads and dashing through the burn¬ 
ing partition and under the shower of smoking bits 
of paper from the ceiling. 

“Oh, why doesn’t he take them out through the 
closet and down the stairs to the alley!” thought 
Mardee, wringing her hands in suspense. 

Most of the boys were engaged in tearing down 
the strips of paper and trampling out the fire. 
Some of them were beating it out overhead with 
their hands. The older men in the audience were 
attempting to clear the room in orderly fashion 
and assist in putting out the fire. The calmest of 
the women were seeking to quiet the others and 
help in getting the crowd down the narrow stairs 
without confusion. Mrs. Gray and Bab had 
joined Mardee in her corner, which was still com¬ 
paratively safe, and Doctor Gray was up in front, 
busy putting out the fire. 

‘ i The closet! ’ ’ screamed Mardee over the noise 
and excitement. 1 i Professor McKie! The closet! 
The door to the stairs! ’ ’ 

He did not hear her. Nobody seemed to know 
what she meant. Evidently she was the only per¬ 
son who had discovered the back stairs to the alley. 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 287 

There was no time now to tell any one else about 
it and explain how to reach it. 

There was nothing 1 to do but to get to the stage 
somehow herself and show the girls the way. 
Mardee glanced up overhead. The strips were 
still burning and falling. The space between her 
and the burning partition cutting off the stage was 
filled with flakes of fire. It brought up in Mar- 
dee’s busy brain the thought of a fiery snowstorm. 

But the flames had already reached the canopy 
over the stage. When those strips began to burn 
and fall — 

Mardee shuddered. She glanced from Caro’s 
net dress to her own thin frock — the organdie 
party dress. Organdie would offer no more re¬ 
sistance to fire than net. 

But something had to be done and she was the 
only one who could do it. Her eye fell on the 
thick canvas of the side-show tent beside her. 
She seized it in both hands and shook it violently. 
The insecure tent poles gave way and with a 
strong pull she managed to jerk the canvas free 
and throw it over her head. 

“I have to show Professor McKie how to get 
those girls out,” she said to her mother, and 
wrapped the tent canvas about her dress as she 
ran. 

Straight through the burning area she dashed, 
dodging this way and that to avoid the falling 
strips. 

1 ‘ Come with me! ’ ’ she demanded breathlessly of 
Caro and her maids of honor and Professor 
McKie. “Oh, quick! Quick!” 


288 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


She opened the door to the closet and led the 
way through the dark, narrow passage to that 
other door fastened with the rusty lock. 

“There’s a stairway here leading to the ground 
outside,” she explained, as she shot the protest¬ 
ing bolt and threw open the door. 

“Thank God,” she heard Professor McKie 
breathe in the dark closet behind her, as the 
fresh outdoor air rushed in and fanned their 
faces. 

Down the narrow flight of stairs they felt their 
way to the alley below. Some of the girls sank on 
the bottom steps from weakness. Some leaned 
against the brick wall of the building. 

“I never was so frightened in my life,” declared 
Caro unsteadily. 

“I hope I shall never be so frightened again,” 
sighed another girl, holding her heart. 

As soon as they had sufficiently recovered from 
the shock and strain, they went around the house 
to the front door. There was a crowd in the hall 
at the foot of the stairs and many people were 
hurrying up and down the stairways. 

“Here they are! Here are Caro and her 
maids!” a voice called out, when Mardee and her 
party put in their appearance. 

“Caro!” cried Mrs. Thorne hysterically, throw¬ 
ing her arms about her daughter’s neck. “Some 
one go upstairs and tell her father she is safe!” 

Other mothers and fathers and distracted rela¬ 
tives received the rest of the girls in very much 
the same way. 

“How did you get out?” they inquired, when 


THE JUNE JUBILEE 289 

other emotions had had time to make themselves 
felt through the first relief. 

i ‘ Mardee Gray knew of a staircase leading down 
out of a closet behind the throne / 9 explained Pro¬ 
fessor McKie. 1 1 She ran through the fire to reach 
us.” 

4 ‘In that dress?” demanded some incredulous 
mother, holding her recovered daughter close in 
her arms. 

“She wrapped herself in a canvas tent. It took 
courage and quick thinking to do what she did,” 
Professor McKie answered again. 

People came up to seize her hand and thank her. 
Mardee, in the reaction from her distress and ex¬ 
citement, felt weak and confused. She could not 
understand what they said. There seemed to be 
an unending number of them. She wanted to cry. 

‘ ‘ The fire is out, ’ 9 somebody announced, and the 
word was passed along down the stairs. The 
people went up again to get hats and wraps and 
possessions they had left behind in the rush. 
Mardee followed them, because she was too con¬ 
fused and weak to be able to think of anything 
else to do. 

The fire had done very little damage. The pa¬ 
per, being thin, burned up quickly without setting 
anything else on fire, and there had been enough 
people fighting the flames to keep them under con¬ 
trol. 

The story of Mardee’s brave deed had preceded 
her up the stairs, and all along the way she was 
passed from one enthusiastic friend to another, 
shaken hands with, congratulated, thanked, 


290 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


praised, until she was hysterical with the com¬ 
bined effect of the plaudits and her earlier disap¬ 
pointment. 

At the door to the assembly room she met her 
father. At sight of his dear familiar face, Mar- 
dee’s feeling of tension gave way and she threw 
herself, sobbing, into his arms. 

‘ 4 There, there, dear. I know. Come with me. 
Mother is waiting. We had better go home. ’ 9 He 
soothed her and held her tight in a comforting 
embrace. 

He smoothed the bowed head and patted the 
shaking shoulders and motioned eager helpers 
quietly away until Mardee felt better. After a 
while she looked up and said: 

“I can go now. Take me home, Daddy / 9 

Then with her father’s arm around her waist, 
she went down the stairs and got into the automo¬ 
bile where Mrs. Gray was anxiously awaiting her 
with Bab. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER ANT 

Mardee was a heroine, but she had wanted to be 
a queen. Her mother put her to bed and sat be¬ 
side her, quietly stroking her hair until she had 
closed her eyes and seemed about to sleep. Then 
Mrs. Gray left her and Mardee was alone with her 
thoughts. Never in her more than fourteen years 
of life had she been with such unpleasant com¬ 
panions. 

“You weren’t good enough to win!” she ac¬ 
cused herself scathingly. “You thought you were 
so pretty and popular that everybody would choose 
you for queen. It never entered your head that 
they might want somebody else more than you. 
You’ve been a vain, conceited, self-satisfied, un¬ 
endurable prig!” 

It was Mardee Grasshopper she was arraigning. 

“This is what Mardee Grasshopper comes to. 
Mardee Ant could have gone peaceably along, en¬ 
joying her books and studies and school days and 
good friends and been happy to-night if you hadn’t 
pushed her out of the way and insisted upon try¬ 
ing to be the most popular girl in the high school, 
and keeping up with so many acquaintances you 
couldn’t enjoy your friends, and going to so many 
parties you didn’t have time to study, and caring 


292 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


so much about clothes you lost your love for books. 
And then, when you find you are not so popular as 
you thought you were, what have you left? Noth¬ 
ing! What do a lot of acquaintances amount to? 
Only your real friends care whether you are queen 
or not. What satisfaction is there in going to 
parties? They only make you want to go more, 
and when there are not any parties to go to you 
have nothing to fill your time with. And how 
does pride in pretty clothes help when you’re dis¬ 
appointed and sick at heart? There is no sense 
in having more than just so many, and they wear 
out, and somebody else can always have others 
just as pretty.” 

She crawled out of bed and went to sit on the 
floor by the window, where she could look at the 
tip of her poplar tree silhouetted against the 
starry sky. 

“And friends like Tom Adair will stay with 
you and laugh and play just so long as you are a 
belle and there is a gay crowd around you. But 
when somebody else is the most popular girl, then 
they help to make her more popular. That is 
the kind of friendship Mardee Grasshopper in¬ 
spires. 

“Of course, there are friends like Branch St. 
John who stick to you through thick and thin, 
but they are the kind of friends that Mardee Ant 
makes. Branch has always said he was Mardee 
Ant’s knight. Mardee Grasshopper is just lucky 
to have some friends she didn’t make for herself.” 

There by that window Mardee Ant and Mardee 
Grasshopper had a reckoning together. 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER ANT 293 

Mardee Ant presented reminders of pleasant 
hours spent by the dining-room lamp on quiet 
evenings and in the rocking chair by the stove on 
cold afternoons, of happy days with old and tried 
friends like the S-B-double-M’s, in the enjoyment 
of simple pleasures, of inner resources which were 
an insurance against loneliness and bitterness of 
heart. She arrayed them against Mardee Grass¬ 
hopper’s memories, now turned to ashes of Dead 
Sea fruit, and she asked for a judgment of the 
relative merits of the two. Mardee Grasshopper 
had nothing to offer in opposition,—-that night. 
She had to admit that she had chased a will-o’- 
the-wisp, that in pursuing the glittering chance of 
becoming queen of the June Jubilee she had for¬ 
gotten all about the more solid reward of the Davis 
medal, and that the failure of her hopes had 
brought her more pain than Mardee Ant could 
have incurred. 

In the still hours of the night, with her poplar 
tree and the stars for witnesses, Mardee vowed to 
renounce Mardee Grasshopper and strive to be¬ 
come Mardee Ant. She went to sleep hating Mar¬ 
dee Grasshopper for the pass she had brought her 
to — defeated before all the world Mardee Grass¬ 
hopper had cultivated — humiliated — disillu¬ 
sioned — bereft of compensations to fall back on. 

In the morning things seemed brighter. 
Friends called her over the telephone to ask how 
she was feeling, to express their regret that she 
had not been elected queen, and to congratulate 
her in enthusiastic terms on the part she had 
played during the fire. 


294 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


Caro was one of the first to telephone, and her 
words carried balm to her rival’s sore heart. 

“Ed ten thousand times rather have been you 
than me last night,” she declared. “I deserved 
no credit for being queen of the June Jubilee, but 
you could not have been elected to fill the place 
you made for yourself in peopled hearts. No¬ 
body will ever forget what you did as long as you 
live.’ ’ 

Later in the morning she sent a big bunch of 
peonies with her own and her mother’s cards. 

Other people sent flowers, too. An enormous 
box of hot-house roses came to “the queen of the 
Mardee Gray Club”, and Mardee repented of the 
injustice she had done Tom in her thoughts the 
night before. There was another offering of sev¬ 
eral dozen carnations with a note of sympathy 
signed by a long list of Freshmen names,— Don 
Willis’s, Ed McKie’s, Branch St. John’s and Ros- 
coe Lawhead’s prominent among them. The S-B- 
double-M’s names were on it, too, and they also 
sent a separate offering of roses to “the S-B- 
double-M Queen.” So many friends had robbed 
their gardens to express condolence and congratu¬ 
lation that all Mrs. Gray’s vases were filled, and 
she and Lighty and the girls had trouble finding 
enough pitchers and jars and bowls to hold the 
wealth of floral messengers. 

“Lordy, Miss Mardee, honey,” Lighty ex¬ 
pressed herself, striking an admiring pose with 
lean brown hands on checked gingham hips, “folks 
is just sendin’ flowers down! They sure does 
think a heap o’ you,” 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER ANT 295 

Tlie flowers, and the sympathy, and the honor 
to the heroine were all very pleasant in their way, 
but they were not the same as being chosen queen. 
Not for one single minute did she forget her dis¬ 
appointment, or forgive Mardee Grasshopper for 
having brought it on her. 

The other three S-B-double-M’s put in their ap¬ 
pearance before the day was far along and ex¬ 
claimed rapturously over the bower Mardee’s 
house had become. 

“I wend to have found you making dole out of 
measure,’’ declared Sally, who seldom talked 
straight “United States”, but couched her re¬ 
marks in the language of the “Morte d’Arthur” 
when she was not using initials — or dog Latin 
or the deaf-and-dumb language — 4 ‘but instead I 
see such manner of good cheer as all men should 
marvel at it!” 

“Faith and bejabbers, if it isn’t a rale Oirish 
wake!” was Begorry’s cheerful opinion. 

“That’s what it is,” laughed Mardee. “It’s a 
wake. These are funeral flowers.” 

Funeral flowers! The phrase stuck in Mardee’s 
mind. 

“They are funeral flowers,” she said soberly 
that night to the family gathered about the dining¬ 
room table for one of their cozy evenings. Lighty 
had departed with her pan, and Seldom Fed, with 
his nose on his forepaws, was engaging in some 
terrible dream battle that disturbed his slum¬ 
bers with twitchings and whimpered grunts. 
“The funeral is Mardee Grasshopper’s — hor¬ 
rid thing. I believe, after all, Mardee Ant is 


296 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


the real me. At any rate I like her better — 1 ’ 

“Amen!” fervently from Bab. 

“Honestly I do,” continued Mardee, after the 
laugh that had interrupted her discourse. “Her 
pleasures are deeper and finer and can’t be 
snatched away by chance, or by other people, as 
Mardee Grasshopper’s can.” 

“I guess if you were Mardee Grasshopper I 
should love Mardee Grasshopper better, but if 
you’re going to be Mardee Ant then I shall love 
Mardee Ant better,” smiled Mrs. Gray comfort¬ 
ably, running her darning ball down into the toe of 
a long stocking and grasping it firmly. 

“How about you, Dad?” 

“I can tell you which one I hope you will choose, 
but I can’t choose for you. The choice rests with 
you. ’ ’ 

“Well, I have chosen. I don’t want to be just a 
butterfly. I want to use my mind and do some¬ 
thing worth while. And to show you that I mean 
to use my mind I am going to take that Davis 
medal. If I start in right now and study until the 
end of the term, I can make up what I have lost at 
school. Just watch little Mardee Ant in action! ’ ’ 

She reached for her books with vim and opened 
with a bang the first one she picked up. 

“Listen to this,” she laughed. “The first 
words my eyes fall on — 

“ ‘My mind to me a kingdom is, 

Such present joys therein I find, 

That it excels all other bliss 
That earth affords or grows by kind.’ 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER ANT 297 

“That’s Mardee Ant. Now here’s Mardee Grass¬ 
hopper: 

“ ‘ I see how plenty surfeits oft, 

And hasty climbers soon do fall ; 

I see that those which are aloft 
Mishap doth threaten most of all.’ ” 

There were only two weeks left before the end 
of the school year. Mardee knew she would have 
to put in every possible minute getting up the 
term’s work if she expected to be as well prepared 
as Branch St. John and Roscoe Lawhead for the 
final examinations. She had not fallen behind in 
her class grades’for three reasons. One was that 
the record she had made in the first two terms had 
established a reputation for her with the teachers, 
who took it for granted that she knew her lessons 
and gave her the benefit of every doubt. Another 
was that the habit of study she had acquired made 
it possible for her to grasp the contents of a les¬ 
son without giving much time to its preparation. 
And the other was that her thorough grounding 
in all her subjects had made it possible for her 
to guess often at the answers to questions asked 
her even when she did not know them. But she 
had done so little studying since February that she 
lacked a comprehensive idea of what she was to be 
examined on, and she began at the first of the 
term’s work in every book, and made a review of 
each, page by page. 

She had to decline a great many invitations and 
miss a great deal of fun. 


298 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


“But I can have fun after I get the Davis 
medal,” she comforted herself, and continued to 
smile and shake her head at the importunities of 
friends. 

“It is awfully hard to say no,” she confessed to 
Branch one day. From Don’s porch next door he 
had seen her hard at work on a lesson in the ham¬ 
mock on her porch and had come over to find out 
why she had not gone on a certain picnic he knew 
she had been invited to attend. “I guess that is 
because there is so much of Mardee Grasshopper 
in me.” 

Branch, finding no chair handy, sat down on the 
floor at her feet and leaned his back against the 
railing. 

“Mardee,” he said thoughtfully, “that first 
night I was sorry you weren’t elected queen of the 
June Jubilee. But the more I think about it, the 
more I feel that it was the best thing that could 
have happened. It opened your eyes to the dif¬ 
ference between Mardee Grasshopper and Mardee 
Ant, didn’t it! And you know I have always 
liked Mardee Ant better.” 

Tom Adair felt very differently. 

He, too, came to sit on her porch one afternoon 
when she was busy studying. But for quite an¬ 
other reason. He was there to try to persuade 
her to put up her books and join a party that was 
going out to one of the pleasure parks to swim. 

“ ‘ All work and no play will make Mardee a dull 
girl,’ ” he paraphrased persuasively. 

Mardee thought over his words after he had 
gone. 


MARDEE GRASSHOPPER ANT 299 

“Mardee Ant doesn’t have to be a dull girl,” 
she decided resolutely. 4 ‘ But she is going to earn 
her pleasures. Mardee Grasshopper found out 
that all play and no work is like a meal made up 
entirely of dessert. It is apt to cause indiges¬ 
tion. 9 9 

As the day approached for examinations to be¬ 
gin she figuratively set her teeth. She was grimly 
determined not to be beaten again. The whole 
school was interested in the race for the medal. 
They watched the bulletin board for the Freshman 
grades and collected about it to comment when the 
results of an examination were posted. 

“Mardee Gray is a neck ahead,” some one an¬ 
nounced when the Latin grades went up with 99 
for Mardee, 97 for Branch St. John, and 96 for 
Roscoe Lawhead. 

“The S-B-double-M’s will give a moonlight pic¬ 
nic on the river bank in your honor if you win the 
Davis medal , 9 9 said Marilyn Gibson. 

‘ 1 Really and truly % 9 9 

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” 

“Then get out your invitations and begin to 
make the sandwiches,” Mardee advised, “for I 
mean to take the Davis medal . 9 9 

The next day the English grades were posted 
and Mardee led with 100. 

She never lost her advantage over her rivals. 
She got 100 in history; even in physics, her hated 
bugaboo, she made a grade of 98. She “won in a 
walk”, to use the words of the high school. 

One of the features of the program on com¬ 
mencement night was the presentation of the Davis 


800 MARDEE GRAY’S CHOICE 


medal, and Mardee, dressed all in white, in a new 
organdie dress made by hand by her mother, 
stepped forth on the stage of the auditorium to 
receive the coveted box from the hands of the su¬ 
perintendent. 

“We had better have ‘Mardee Ant’ engraved on 
the back of this,” smiled her father, when she 
handed it to him to examine after they got home. 

“Oh, Daddy, the S-B-double-M’s are going to 
have their moonlight picnic next Wednesday night. 
I can hardly wait for the time to come!” she 
switched off the subject to inform him raptur¬ 
ously. “I am going to wear my blue linen dress, 
and I want a pair of new white shoes, please.” 
Then she laughed at herself for the interruption. 
“I am afraid my middle name will always be 
Grasshopper, even if I am Mardee Ant,” she 
apologized. “Mardee Grasshopper Ant — that’s 
my name.” 


THE END 









































A story of the best type of home life, with a charming heroine . 


Then Came Caroline 


By LELA HORN RICHARDS 
With illustrations by M. L. Greer. 
12mo. Cloth 306 pages. 


Caroline was the fourth daughter in Doctor Ravenel’s family 
of five girls, — fourth on the list, but first in mischief, in ingenu¬ 
ity, in originality, in human sympathy and democracy. The 
father’s health made it necessary for the Ravenels to leave their 
old Southern home and migrate to Colorado. Here Caroline 
grew up — from ten to eighteen — her days full of interest, 
her courage, as the family struggled along under straightened 
circumstances, always unflagging. Sometimes the delight and 
sometimes the despair of her mother and her sisters, Caroline 
made friends in many quarters and met in unusual ways the many 
emergencies into which her impulsiveness led her. 

This is a splendid story of the best type of home life, and the 
four other girls — Leigh the unselfish, Alison the ambitious and 
self-seeking, Mayre the artistic and Hope the baby — complete 
a well-individualized group, alternately caressed and disciplined 
by old black “Mammy,” who had accompanied her “fam’bly” 
from Virginia. There are plenty of boys in the story too, likable 
lads, such as inevitably would gather around a group of whole¬ 
some and merry girls, ready for a game, a dance or any other 
frolic. Caroline will be a favorite with girl readers. They will 
enjoy the account of her running away; her attempt to help her 
mother form a “social acquaintance” in their new home; her out¬ 
witting of Alison at the party; her early literary efforts; and the 
daring with which she “puts her finger” in nearlyieveryone’s “pie.” 


LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers 
34 Beacon Street, Boston 




















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